Charlamagne Tha God has always been in love with books. When asked about the impetus of his publishing imprint, Black Privilege Publishing, the radio host, television personality, and bestselling author goes back to his childhood. “I grew up off [Pizza Hut’s] Book It program where you read books and earned free pizza,” he says. He was encouraged by his mom, an English teacher, to expand his mind by reading everything—books by Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary, books about UFOs and Sasquatch. “She’d tell me to read things that don’t pertain to me,” he recalls. “I’d always been a really avid reader.”
His passion for reading influenced his desire to tell stories—as did a local legend in his home state. “Growing up in South Carolina, there’s the myth of the Lizard Man, and I wrote this story about him being an outsider wanting to be like the other kids, wanting to play,” he says, adding with a laugh: “I wrote that in high school—I actually probably should go back to it.” Having caught the writing bug penning supernatural stories as a teen, Charlamagne eventually went on to pen back-to-back bestselling books, 2017's Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It and and 2018's Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me.
While inking the details surrounding his third book, Get Honest or Die Lying: Why Small Talk Sucks, which published last spring, Charlamagne started dreaming even bigger. “You could be someone that says, ‘Hey yeah, I’ll take the big check,’ or you could be someone that says, ‘You know what, give me a modest check but how about an imprint?’” he says. “I’d like my own imprint.”
That imprint became Black Privilege Publishing, which officially launched in 2020 collaboration with Simon & Schuster's Atria Books, where Charlamagne teamed with editor Nicholas Ciani and SVP and publisher Libby McGuire.
The origins of the imprint run parallel with Charlamagne’s own roots. “Being from South Carolina, a place where the first anti-literacy laws were created, where you could get punished for teaching an enslaved person to read,” he says, “to have your own book where I’m empowering Black people to tell their stories, especially right now when we live in a time where they’re trying to erase us from American history, I think it’s imperative now more than ever before to help the Black community tell their stories.”
Black Privilege made its debut in 2021 with the publication of its two inaugural titles: State of Emergency: How We Win the Country We Built by civil rights activist Tamika D. Mallory and the novel Shallow Waters by Anita Kopacz, which imagines the Yoruba sea goddess Yemaya cast into mid-19th-century America.
Since then, the imprint has published such titles as Doug Melville’s Invisible Generals: Rediscovering Family Legacy, and a Quest to Honor America's First Black Generals; Alice Randall's My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present, and Future; and All the Smoke: All the Stars, All the Stories, No Apologies, an in-depth look at the popular sports podcast by Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.
As Black Privilege celebrates its fifth anniversary, the imprint's inaugural authors will once again lead its 2025 slate of releases, which includes Mallory's I Lived to Tell the Story: A Memoir of Love, Legacy, and Resilience and Kopacz's The Wind on Her Tongue. Also slated for this year are Cheryl McKissack Daniel’s The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers, about the family that founded one of the nation's leading Black design and construction firms, and No Holes Barred: A Dual Manifesto of Sexual Exploration and Power, a look at the world of kink by the hosts of the Decisions, Decisions podcast, Mandii B and WeezyWTF.
So what does Charlamagne have planned for the imprint's next five years? “The future is similar to what I’m doing now,” he says. “I want to see more Black people telling stories that they may not be used to us telling, like science fiction, supernatural thriller, horror.” The imprint is tapping into a deep well of ideas and authors across a widening range of categories and genres, including a line of graphic novels, which will kick off with Kevin Grevioux's Darkstorm. In addition to publishing into more genres, Black Privilege is also looking to collaborate with and publish voices from the worlds of radio and podcasting, a nod to Charlamagne’s longtime tenure with the radio The Breakfast Club.
“There's nothing like having something that you can actually take home in the form of a book. I just really love being in a position to help people,” Charlamagne says. “You know, help them tell their stories.”
