Frederick Joseph

Frederick Joseph is a New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of "The Black Friend and upcoming Patriarchy Blues", "Disney’s Black Panther: The Gift of Dream" (2022) and "Better Than We Found It" (2022), "We Alive, Beloved: Poems" (2024) and "This Thing of Ours" (2025).

He is also a Forbes Under 30 list-maker for marketing and advertising, as well as an activist and philanthropist, with over a decade years of marketing experience. He is the sole creator of the largest GoFundMe campaign in history, the #BlackPantherChallenge, which ultimately generated over $43 million dollars in earned advertising and media for Disney and raised over $950K and allowed more than 75,000 children worldwide to see the Marvel movie 'Black Panther’ for free.

Joseph is a Yonkers, NY raised three-time New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Joseph’s books have been named an Amazon Editors’ Pick, notable by the International Literacy Association, Best Children’s Book of the Year by Bank Street College, a Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choice selection, nominated for the In The Margins award, Booklist Editors’ Choice, a Notable Trade Book for Young People by the National Council for Social Studies, a Dogwood Title by the Missouri Associations of School Librarians, as well as longlisted for the Green Earth Book Award, and more. He has written for The Boston Globe, Essence, Huffington Post, AdWeek, and Cosmopolitan, and won both the Letter Review Poetry prize and a Letter Review Essay prize.

Joseph’s writing and philanthropic work go hand-in-hand, and he has been recognized for community investment by Forbes 30 Under 30, the Comic-Con Humanitarian of the Year award, The Root100 list of Most Influential African Americans, and was most recently honored with the 2023 Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Vanguard Award, as well as the 2024 Allyship Award at Lincoln Center’s Black Girl Magic Ball. He has been a featured speaker at the UN HeForShe Summit, and has worked with fortune 500 companies and presidential candidates on their DEI efforts.