Nick Chiles has spent four decades chronicling African American life and culture of famous men. His pop-culture icon biographies have put him at the top of the literary agent referral list for helping celebrities write their memoirs.
A lot of people have likely never heard of Chiles, a faculty member in the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications. But the name of the Yale graduate and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist appears on book covers beneath notables Jamie Foxx, Bobby Brown, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Rev. Al Sharpton, former NBA player Etan Thomas and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, to name a few. He’s the go-to man for Black male celebrities opening up their lives in a public medium, a tell-all opportunity to clear the air, quell rumors, and be honest with fans.
A Career Built on Collaboration
Chiles’s path to becoming one of the nation’s most sought-after collaborative writers began in journalism. He worked as a reporter for The Dallas Morning News and New York Newsday, where he contributed to a 1992 Pulitzer Prize-winning story about a fatal subway crash.
“I was so young that in the back of my mind, I was like, oh, this was easy. I’m going to win a lot of these,” Chiles recalled with a laugh. “It’s just like lightning in a bottle. You just happen to be in the right place at the right time on the right story.”
Today, Chiles has established himself as a top-tier collaborative writer. Four of his books have hit the New York Times Best Seller list including works with Jakes, Brown, Sharpton, and Grammy-winning gospel artist Kirk Franklin.
His process involves deeply immersing himself in his subjects’ lives. When writing “Act Like You Got Some Sense: And Other Things My Daughters Taught Me,” with Jamie Foxx in 2021, Chiles traveled with the actor to New Orleans, Miami, New York, and Los Angeles.
“Jamie felt like he was so busy that he thought, ‘I need to just have you with me, because I don’t know when I’m going to have time to spend six hours that I set aside to talk to you this day, and then the next day, three hours,’” Chiles explained. “So, his solution was to just have me go with him everywhere and get like an hour on the plane or in the car.” The immersion paid off.
“I get to know them so well that if somebody brought me a question about how Jamie Foxx feels about climate change or gender equity, I would be able to give you an answer,” Chiles said of his collaborators. “It’s almost like being a corporate speechwriter in his voice without even having talked to him about it because I know him so well.”
Beyond the superficial
Chiles’s journalism background serves him well in extracting authentic stories from his subjects. He describes his interview process as onion peeling, probing deeper with each conversation.
“Usually, I get to the point where almost with every person I’ve written with, at some point they start crying because it gets so intense,” he said. “A lot of stuff that they’ve never really talked about, especially celebrities – they bury a lot of stuff.”
His approach differs from typical celebrity interviews.
“A lot of times when we start out, I get what I call the People Magazine quotes, the superficial stuff, and I’m like, let me get that out of their system,” Chiles explained. “So, we start digging deeper and deeper.”
His job, he says, is connecting dots his subjects have never connected themselves – tracing lines from childhood experiences to adult decisions. When subjects resist certain revelations, Chiles respects their boundaries while finding alternative paths to the truth.
“It’s their book, their name is on it, so they have to sign off on it,” he said. “But usually, like 99 percent of the time, I find another path back to it that will be more acceptable to them.”
Deep dive into Black history
The fall 2025 release of his latest co-authored book—his twenty-third— breaks the mold of his typical projects, diving deep into African American history to learn how a woman became head of the oldest and leading Black design and construction firm in the nation. The subject of the most recent memoir he helped write is executive Cheryl McKissack Daniel, who is not a pop star. “The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers,” digs deep into a painful, complicated past of Black men and women building a business using skills learned in 19th century slavery that developed into a thriving woman-run empire 175 years later.
“Most of the books that I do are not research heavy,” he said. With memoirs of celebrities he simply verifies information relayed to him, he explains. “That book was a real joy,” he said of the McKissack story, “because I had to recreate enough of the history that surrounded her family in the 1800s and early 1900s to be able to tell stories.”
Teaching, too
At this point in his career, Chiles now has the luxury of picking the projects and people with whom he most wants to work. That requires juggling his writing schedule around a full-time teaching position. He joined the UGA faculty in 2019 after fellowships at Columbia University and Princeton University, where he taught as a recipient of the Ferris Fellowship and filled in for a teacher on sabbatical.
“I really liked it,” he said. “And I was really good at it. And I’m like, you know, I want to do more of this.”
He went back to school to get his Master of Fine Arts in narrative nonfiction writing from Grady College so he could teach full-time. He carefully schedules his writing projects around academic breaks, dedicating winter and summer vacations to intensive manuscript work.
At this stage of his career, Chiles turns down more projects than he accepts, choosing only stories that genuinely interest him and involve people he wouldn’t mind “spending the next two years of my life intertwined with.”
What’s Next?
Chiles has also recently ghost written another book steeped in research. “Black Out Loud: The Revolutionary History of Black Comedy from Vaudeville to ‘90s Sitcoms,” by PBS News Hour host Geoff Bennett is due for release in March.
He currently has several projects in various stages. He recently completed work on a memoir with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, scheduled for publication in September. He’s also in talks to write a memoir with professional wrestler Ron Killings. Additionally, Bishop T.D. Jakes has asked Chiles to help revise his upcoming book, “Anchored,” about finding stability in turbulent times.
You can read more about Chiles and his work at nickchiles.com.
Tracy N. Coley worked for nearly 30 years in communications at the University of Georgia where she earned an MFA in narrative nonfiction writing. She is owner of Lucky Dog Press, a local boutique book publishing firm offering writers individualized guidance. She also teaches classes on writing craft and writing through grief and trauma.
