Teju Cole

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Teju Cole, born in 1975, is an American writer, photographer, and art historian. Every Day Is for the Thief (2006); a book, Known and Strange Things (2016); and a photobook, Punto d'Ombra (2016; published in English as Blind Spot).

Personal life and education

Cole was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Nigerian parents and is the oldest of four children. Cole and his mother returned to Lagos, Nigeria, a little after his birth, where his father joined them after receiving their MBA from Western Michigan University. Cole returned to the United States at the age of 17 to Western Michigan University for one year, before transferring to Kalamazoo College, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1996. Cole earned a doctorate in art history at Columbia University after dropping out of medical school at the University of Michigan. He is the Gore Vidal Professor of Creative Writing at Harvard University and now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Career

Cole is the author or co-author of several books, including the novella Every Day Is for the Thief; the book, Open City; a series of more than 40 essays, Known and Strange Things; and a photo book, Punto d'Ombra (2016) (published in English in 2017 as Blind Spot). Cole has been dubbed "one of the most gifted writers of his time," Salman Rushdie said of him.

He was a distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. He served as "writer in residence" of the Literaturhaus Zurich and the PWG Foundation in Zurich from June to November 2014.

Every Day Is for the Thief, Cole's debut book in 2007, is about a young man who returns to visit his home country, Nigeria, after being away for fifteen years. The book reads like a travelogue describing the way of life in Lagos, and it reveals how corruption can impact anyone, regardless of their place in society.

Julius, a young graduate student investigating psychiatry in New York City, has recently split up with his girlfriend and spends the majority of his time wandering Manhattan, having written in 2011. The bulk of Open City revolves around Julius' inner thoughts as he rambles around the city, painting scenes of both what happens around him and past events that he can't help but dwell on. Julius spends a few weeks in Belgium, where he makes some new friends. He is mainly in search of his grandmother. He meets many people along the way and has long discussions with them about philosophy and politics. He seems to be relishing these discussions. On his return to New York, he encounters a young Nigerian woman who fundamentally changes the way he sees himself."

Literary commentators have generally praised Open City's translation into ten languages, with mainly glowing feedback. It's author James Wood of The New Yorker that it's a "beautiful, subtle, and, eventually, original book." "The novel's value lies in its honesty," The New York Times says. The Independent calls Open City "hypnotic," "transfixing," and Cole's "striking debut," while Time referred to the book as "a profoundly original work, intellectually enriching, and possessing of a style both engaging and seductive."

Cole's first collection of essays and criticism appeared in 2016. Claudia Rankine, a writer for the New York Times, called it "an essential and scintillating journey" and singled out, in particular, his articles on photography, in which he "reveals [his] voracious appetite for and admiration of the visual."

On the website Medium, Cole wrote the short story City of Pain in 2020. This tale concerns a traveler who arrives in a strange place during a tragedy. Cole's City of Pain novel (renamed "Radia") interspersed with the music of Caroline Shaw, Yvette Janine Jackson, Henryk Gorecki, Hildegard Von Bingen, Kaija Saariaho, and Ludwig van Beethoven in 2021, which culminated in a partnership with the Orchestra of St. Lukes.

Cole has worked with newspapers including the New York Times, Qarrtsiluni, Granta, The New Inquiry, and A Public Space. Quarrtsiluni (2005–2013) was an online literary journal that attempted to convert blog software from social media; the intention of this project was to provide full access to writers/commentators of various topics "who never quite understood our ambition of having a print-on-demand option for each issue." In 2016, he was a finalist for the National Magazine Award, "On Photography" in The New York Times Magazine.

Cole has been credited with coining the phrase "White Savior Industrial Complex" in a series of tweets and an article in The Atlantic. Nicholas Kristof, the author's columnist, who Cole referred to as an example of a white savior, was elicited by the article's series of tweets that triggered the article. Kristof mistook Cole, a Nigerian-American, as a Ugandan, who said he believed Cole was a victim of a backlash against white African scholars from middle-class African scholars. Kristof said he was angry because Cole said that "white Americans should not intervene in a humanitarian tragedy because the victims are of a different skin color." Cole responded, saying he was worried about Kristof's sentimentality and his inability in assessing the humanitarian need in Africa: "All he sees is desire, and he sees no need to justify the need."

Cole, alongside Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Peter Carey, Rachel Kushner, and Taiye Selasi, was one of six writers to protest the PEN American Center gala in April 2015, who honoured the French satirical journal "Freedom of Expression Courage" award, as co-hosts of the event in April 2015. Cole wrote in The New Yorker two days after the assassination of the Charlie Hebdo workers by Islamists in Paris, a charge that was "racist and Islamophobic," according to several commentators, including the president of France's top anti-racism group who praised Charlie Hebdo as "the best anti-racist weekly in this country."

In a solo exhibition in Milan in 2016, Cole's photography called Punto d'ombra. The photographs from this exhibition were published by Contrasto Books in 2016, and then Random House in 2017 under the title Blind Spot.

Cole's ingenious use of social media (particularly Twitter and Instagram) as a creative platform has long been acknowledged.

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Awards and honors

• 2011 Time magazine's "Best Books of the Year" for Open City
• 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for Open City
• 2012 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winner for Open City
• 2012 Ondaatje Prize shortlist for Open City
• 2012 The Morning News Tournament of Books finalist
• 2013 International Literature Award for the German-language translation by Christine Richter-Nilsson of Open City
• 2015 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Fiction) valued at $150,000
• 2018 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for Creative Arts