Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas rapped as a teenager in Jackson, Mississippi, before taking a creative writing degree at Belhaven University, the first Black graduate of its creative writing programme. The Hate U Give (2017) grew out of her response to police shootings of unarmed Black Americans: Starr Carter, sixteen, is the only witness when an officer shoots her childhood friend Khalil, and she has to decide what to say and to whom. It reached number one in its first week and collected the Morris Award along with Printz and Coretta Scott King honours. On the Come Up (2019) follows Bri, a sixteen-year-old whose late father was a battle rapper and whose first track gets heard as a threat. Concrete Rose (2021) turns back seventeen years to Starr's father, Maverick Carter, at seventeen and suddenly responsible for a baby. Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Manifestor Prophecy (2023) was her first book for younger readers, a fantasy built on African American history and folklore.