About Paul
Paul Tough is the author, most recently, of How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, which has been translated into 25 languages and has spent more than a year on the New York Times hardcover and paperback best-seller lists. His first book, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, was published in 2008.
Paul is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, where he has written extensively about education, parenting, poverty, and politics, including cover stories on character education, the achievement gap, and the Obama administration’s poverty policies. His writing has also appeared in the New Yorker, Slate, GQ, Esquire, and Geist, and on the op-ed page of the New York Times.
He has worked as an editor at the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s Magazine and as a reporter and producer for the public-radio program “This American Life.” He was the founding editor of Open Letters, an online magazine.
He lives with his wife and son in New York.