Poet, performance artist, and novelist Paul Beatty was born in 1962 in West Los Angeles. He received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College and an M.A. in Psychology from Boston University. His books of poetry include Joker, Joker, Deuce (Penguin, 1994) and Big Bank Take Little Bank (1991). He is also the author of the novels Tuff (2000) and The White Boy Shuffle (1996). Paul Beatty lives and works in New York City.
