Nicholas Joe Howard Coles (born Nov. 11, 1947 in Leeds, England) is a British-American scholar in working-class literature and composition studies, and is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
His 1981 PhD dissertation was titled The Making of a Monster: The Working Class in the Industrial Novels and Social Investigations of 1830–1855.
From the late 1980s until 2002 he directed the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, a site of the NWP, working to improve children's writing and academic performance in K-12 schools in the Western Pennsylvania region.
His father, John Howard Coles, was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, and served as a solicitor in Leeds, England, having co-founded the law firm Walker Morris [2].
In 1990 he separated from his ex-wife Annie Kraft, the mother of his elder son, in order to establish a relationship with psychotherapist, author, and artist Jennifer Matesa, whom he married in 1994; they had a son, Jono Coles (now an architect).