Ta-Nehisi Coates Is Coming to Miami in January

Maybe you're feeling frustrated by politics. Maybe issues like police violence, racial discrimination, and poverty in communities of color feel unsolvable. Maybe you read the news each morning and wonder, How in hell did this country get so screwed up?

In January, Ta-Nehisi Coates is coming to Miami to help answer that question.

Miami Book Fair and Books & Books will host an evening with Coates Thursday, January 11, on Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus.

Coates is the Atlantic correspondent who has penned some of the most incisive stories about race in American culture in recent history. His 2014 essay "The Case for Reparations" dove deep into the nation's history of racist policies such as redlining, in which neighborhoods where people of color lived were deemed too risky to qualify for mortgages. More recently, Coates made the case that Donald Trump is "the first white president" in an October essay arguing that Trump ascended to power on promises of erasing the legacy of Barack Obama.

Coates is also the author of three books, including 2015's Between the World and Me, a meditation on being black phrased as an extended letter to his son, which won the National Book Award. He has also penned recent editions of Marvel's Black Panther comics. Few, if any, writers about race in America have been as widely read or as influential in recent years.

With his newest book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Coates devotes one essay to each year of Obama's presidential term. Through new essays and selections of work previously published in the Atlantic, the book explores the complicated political and cultural shifts that took place during the U.S.'s first black president's time in office — including the election of Trump.

Coates will speak in conversation with Nadege Green, who covers social justice issues for WLRN.

An Evening With Ta-Nehisi Coates. 7 p.m. Thursday, January 11, 2018, at Miami-Dade College Wolfson Campus, Chapman Conference Center, 300 NE Second Ave., Miami; miamibookfair.com. Tickets cost $30 and include a copy of We Were Eight Years in Power.