Although his literary reputation is primarily based on the four novels he has published over the course of two decades, Paul Beatty is an author with deep roots in poetry. Not only did he study with Allen Ginsberg (among others) while earning an M.F.A. at Brooklyn College in the late 1980s, but he also was an influential participant in the “slam” poetry scene centered around the Nuyorican Poets Café in the early 1990s. The fiction he has published since 1996 combines a poet’s close attention to language and structure with a broad-ranging fluency in such varied topics as basketball, Japanese cinema, hip-hop culture, and horticulture. Beatty’s career has followed an arc like few others before him, from performing one of his poems on an MTV special in his late twenties to becoming…
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Citation: Maus, Derek C.. "Paul Beatty". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 April 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13919, accessed 25 November 2024.]
