Shaken by the 2009 police shooting of Oscar Grant,[1] then-college student Angie Thomas initially developed the project as a short story for her senior project in Belhaven University’s creative writing program.[2] While writing the short story, the project quickly expanded, though Thomas temporarily put it aside after graduation; speaking to her hometown newspaper, Thomas said, "I wanted to make sure I approached it not just in anger, but with love even".[3] But the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and Sandra Bland drew Thomas back to expand the project into a novel,[4] which she titled after Tupac Shakur's "THUG LIFE" concept: "The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody."[5] Incidents surrounding the killings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile[6] and Michael Brown[7] and widespread ensuing protests against racism and police brutality also informed moments in the book.