Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, was a teenage rapper, and wrote The Hate U Give as a college short story after the shooting of Oscar Grant. It sold at auction in a thirteen-house bidding war and stayed on the bestseller list for years. Her books are about Black teenagers in a specific city, written in a voice close enough to the reader's own that adults keep mistaking craft for transcription. She writes fast, funny dialogue, and she is one of the few young adult authors whose politics are the plot rather than the framing.