Angie Thomas

About Angie Thomas

Angie Thomas was born Angela Thomas on September 20, 1988, and grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Belhaven University, a Christian liberal arts college in Jackson, where she was one of the first students to earn a BFA in creative writing. In 2015, she received a We Need Diverse Books Walter Grant—an early-career award for writers from underrepresented backgrounds—that helped her complete the manuscript that would become her debut novel.

The Hate U Give, published in February 2017, tells the story of sixteen-year-old Starr Carter, who witnesses the police shooting of her unarmed best friend. The novel debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and remained on the list for more than two years. It won the William C. Morris Award for best first novel for young adults, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the Goodreads Choice Awards for both YA Fiction and Debut Author, the Odyssey Award for best audiobook, a Michael L. Printz Honor, a Coretta Scott King Honor, the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, an Edgar Award for Young Adult fiction, and an Audie Award—an extraordinary sweep of the field's major prizes.

Book Challenges and Banning

Despite—or because of—this acclaim, The Hate U Give was pulled from school shelves in Katy Independent School District in Texas in December 2017, just ten months after publication. The district cited "inappropriate language" and "drug use," though critics noted the challenges came largely in response to the novel's portrayal of police violence against Black Americans. It has since been challenged in districts across states including Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Virginia, and consistently ranks among the most frequently challenged books in the country.

Follow-Up Novels

Thomas's second novel, On the Come Up (2019), follows a sixteen-year-old aspiring rapper navigating poverty, family, and the music business in Garden Heights, the same fictional neighborhood as The Hate U Give. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and received a Michael L. Printz Honor in 2022. Her third novel, Concrete Rose (2021)—a prequel exploring the teenage years of Maverick Carter, Starr's father—was also a number-one New York Times bestseller. All three novels are set in the same world, and together they have established Thomas as one of the most important voices in contemporary young adult literature.