Nick Chiles is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of 15 books. He writes primarily about African-American life and culture.
Early life
Chiles grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey. His father is the pianist Walter Chiles, who was the leader of the jazz trio Chiles & Pettiford in the 1960s and of the funk band LTG Exchange in the 1970s. Atlantic Records released the 1965 Chiles & Pettiford recording "Live at Jilly's." Walter Chiles wrote most of the LTG Exchange's songs, including their biggest hit, "Waterbed." Chiles attended St. Peter's Prep in Jersey City and earned a B.A. in psychology at Yale University.
Career
Chiles worked as a reporter for the Dallas Morning News and New York Newsday, where he contributed to a 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning story about a subway crash. He later wrote extensively for the Star-Ledger. His 2006 New York Times op-ed "Their Eyes Were Reading Smut" on the proliferation of street fiction has been widely cited. Chiles has also worked as a ghostwriter. Chiles served as Editor-in-Chief of the travel magazineOdyssey Couleur from 2003-2009 and as Editor-in-Chief of the website AtlantaBlackStar.com from 2014-2015. He worked as a literary agent with Aevitas Creative Management in New York City from 2017-2019. Chiles was the recipient of the prestigious Spencer Fellowship at Columbia University in 2017-2018. He has also been a professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In 2019 he taught at Princeton University as the recipient of the Ferris Fellowship. In 2020, Chiles was selected to serve as the Industry Fellow at the Cox Institute, a part of the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Communications — where he also runs the journalism school's Writing Lab.
Books
Chiles has written or co-written 15 books, three of which were New York Times bestsellers. The latest bestseller was Every Little Step: My Story, which he wrote with entertainer Bobby Brown and which was published in June 2016. The book debuted at #9 on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestsellers List and stayed on the Celebrity Bestsellers List for several months. His other two New York Times bestsellers were the 2013 The Rejected Stone: Al Sharpton and the Path to American Leadership, which he wrote with Rev. Al Sharpton, and The Blueprint: A Plan for Living Above Life’s Storms, co-authored with Kirk Franklin. Chiles and former NBA player Etan Thomas wrote Fatherhood: Rising to the Ultimate Challenge. Chiles and then-Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick collaborated on the 2012 book, Faith in the Dream. His book Justice While Black, written with attorney Robbin Shipp, was a finalist for a 2014 NAACP Image Award. He co-wrote the 2019 book Engage Connect Protect: Empowering Diverse Youth as Environmental Leaders with Angelou Ezeilo, his younger sister. Chiles and his former wife, American author Denene Millner, co-wrote the bestselling three book non-fiction relationship series, What Brothers Think, What Sistahs Know, published by HarperCollins. Their novel Love Don’t Live Here Anymore, published by Dutton, appeared on two bestseller lists, Essence and Blackboard. They also co-wrote the novels In Love And War and A Love Story. A short story by Chiles was included in the Ballantine anthology, Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America, which won a 1996 American Book Award. Chiles and Jeff Jones also co-wrote a young adult novel called The Adventures of De-Ante Johnson: The Obsidian Knight.
