Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas is an American author whose young-adult fiction revolutionised the genre with the voice of Black America. Her debut The Hate U Give — about a teenager who witnesses the police shooting of her unarmed friend — spent months on the New York Times bestseller list, won the Waterstones and multiple prizes, and was adapted into a major film.

Born, raised and still living in Jackson, Mississippi, Thomas was a rapper before she became a writer, and her prose carries rap's cadence and fury. Her later novels On the Come Up and Concrete Rose continue to centre Black teens' full humanity, and she has become one of the most important voices in contemporary YA literature.