Grady’s UGA-alum Writer in Residence has a star-studded resume

Nick Chiles (MFA ’22) has written more books than any other faculty member in the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, so it is no surprise he is their Writer in Residence. Chiles has written over 20 books chronicling Black culture in America, including multiple celebrity memoirs.

He landed at Grady as the Grady Writing Lab coach. At the same time, he joined the MFA Narrative Nonfiction program in the hopes of gaining a full-time faculty role. While going through the program, Chiles continued to teach a writing course.

“I was kind of split in half,” he said. “Half of me was in the building as a student. Half of me was in the building as a faculty member.”

The MFA program has a heavy focus on reading and writing, Chiles shared. Mentors are the key to student success. Graduate students spend a lot of time with their mentor to get feedback and help on projects.

“[Mentors] make the program,” Chiles said.

He took what he learned during the MFA to inform his own classes. He graduated in 2022 and went straight into his new position.

Even as a full-time faculty member, Chiles continues writing. He is currently working on memoirs for Martin Lawrence and Colin Kaepernick. The process of working with these notable figures requires spending a lot of time with them so Chiles can delve into their lives and background.

“Dredging all that stuff up, I think, is unexpectedly painful and emotional for a lot of them in ways that they weren’t expecting,” he said. “And so, there’s a lot of tears, often when I’m going through their family history. I mean, everybody has some pain in their background, in their story.”

Chiles spends months with the celebrities he writes about.

He is also working on a book to chronicle the history of Black comedy in America. He spent the summer doing research, starting as far back as the 1840s with minstrel performers.

“It’s pretty much the history of comedy in the US, because Black people were so integral in forming the idea of what American comedy would look like,” Chiles said.

Chiles won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 as part of an investigative reporting team for New York Newsday. He teaches multiple writing classes at Grady, including feature and memoir writing. Before coming to UGA, Chiles earned his BA at Yale University. He spent time teaching at both Princeton and Columbia.

Throughout his career, Chiles was a reporter for New York Newsday, the Dallas Morning News and the Star-Ledger of New Jersey. He also wrote for the magazines Essence and Ebony, The Atlantic and The Christian Science Monitor.