Charles M. Blow

Charles M. Blow is an accomplished author, journalist, cultural critic, and political commentator. He is the inaugural Langston Hughes Fellow at Harvard University. He previously served as a longtime op-ed columnist for The New York Times and was a political analyst for MSNBC. He also hosted PRIME with Charles Blow on the Black News Channel.

Blow is the author of the best-selling books Fire Shut Up in My Bones and The Devil You Know. Fire Shut Up in My Bones has been adapted into an opera scheduled to premiere at The Metropolitan Opera later this year, marking the first opera by a Black composer in the institution’s history. The Devil You Know has been transformed into a documentary for HBO. Currently, Blow is working on a book about political appeasement.

In 2016, Blow served as a Presidential Visiting Professor at Yale University, where he taught a seminar tracking the presidential race in real time. He was an art director at National Geographic magazine and worked at The Detroit News.

Blow graduated magna cum laude with a BA in mass communications from Grambling State University. He also holds honorary doctorates from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the Metropolitan College of New York. He resides in Atlanta and has three adult children.