The Atlantic

FINALIST—FEATURE WRITING

This wide-ranging account of Barack Obama’s eight years in office honors his achievements while insisting that the success of his presidency was coupled with failure—not Obama’s but America’s. “In the days after Donald Trump’s victory, there would be an insistence that something as ‘simple’ as racism could not explain it,” Coates writes. “As if enslavement had nothing to do with global economics, or as if lynchings said nothing about the idea of women as property.” The Ellie judges described “My President Was Black” as “a historic achievement, elegiac yet celebratory, a rare combination of analysis and reflection.” Long associated with The Atlantic, Coates only recently announced his departure from the magazine. His Atlantic essay “Fear of a Black President” won the National Magazine Award in 2013. His work for the magazine also received Ellie nominations in 2014 and 2015.