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September 29, 2015

Ta-Nehisi Coates Wins MacArthur Genius Grant 
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And best-selling writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has been selected as one of
this year's 24 winners of the Mac Arthur genius grants. Coates is the
author of the new book, "Between the World and Me," which has been
called "required reading" by Toni Morrison. On July 22, we spent the
hour with Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: "What I wanted to do with this book is to give the
reader some sense of what it meant to live under a system of plunder as
an individual, to express that, to take it out of the realm of numbers
and to take it directly into, you know, individual people. How does it
feel every day in your life to live under such a system? How do you cope
with that? How is it warping? How is it perverse? What sort of effects
does it ultimately have on you? And how do you, you know, as much as
possible, make your peace with it?"

That was best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of this year's
winners of the Mac Arthur genius grants. Other winners include
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer and star of the hit Broadway musical
"Hamilton"; Gary Cohen, an environmental health activist; and Juan
Salgado, a Chicago-based immigrant rights organizer.

 

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