Nick Chiles has distinguished himself as both a bestselling author and an award-winning journalist, over the course of three decades as a writer. As a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, the Star-Ledger of New Jersey and New York Newsday, Chiles spent most of his newspaper career covering education, but also did stints as a political reporter and a health reporter.
Chiles has won over a dozen major journalism awards, including a 1992 Pulitzer Prize as part of a New York Newsday team covering a fatal subway crash. He also won 1989 and 1993 National Education Reporting Awards presented by the Education Writers Association. More recently, he won the 2016 Green Eyeshade Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best public affairs reporting, for a piece he did for The Hechinger Report on testing third-graders in Mississippi. He also won two National Association of Black Journalists awards for magazine writing in 2014 for stories in Ebony magazine, including a series on Saving Black Boys.
Chiles is the author or co-author of 14 books, including three New York Times bestsellers. As a celebrity memoirist, he has co-written books with Bobby Brown, Rev. Al Sharpton, Kirk Franklin and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, among others. His 2014 book Justice While Black: Helping African-American Families Navigate and Survive the Criminal Justice System, written with attorney Robbin Shipp, was an NAACP Image Awards finalist.
From 2003 to 2009, Chiles was Editor-in-Chief of Odyssey Couleur, a national travel magazine geared toward African Americans. He also served as Editor-in-Chief of the website AtlantaBlackStar.com, a news site focused on the global African diaspora. A graduate of Yale University, Chiles currently resides in Atlanta with his wife, Denene Millner, and two teenage daughters.
Chiles spent his year as a Spencer Fellow working on a book about the impact of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative and how academicians and educators have made tremendous strides in understanding how to successfully educate and raise black boys, but their work is failing to break through to the communities and families who most need it. He is currently teaching Journalism at Princeton University, and serves on Atlanta, Georgia’s school board.
Mississippi’s new third-grade reading gate test (Green Eyeshade Award winner)
Chronicling the work of an amazing principal in New Orleans