Coe was an oral historian for the Brooklyn Historical Society while in graduate school. She was a research curator in the New York Public Library’s exhibitions department where she co-curated "Find the Past, Know the Future," the most popular exhibition in the Library's history.[4][5][6]
Coe published Alice and Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis in 2014.[12] In 2016, Coe co-hosted the podcast Presidents Are People Too!.[13] In 2018, she hosted the podcast, No Man's Land, which won a Webby award for Best Series.[14]
In 2020, Coe published You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington, making her the first woman biographer to publish a biography of Washington in over a century. The book became a New York Times best-seller in February 2020 and was widely praised as genre-breaking.[3][6][15][16]
Coe co-hosts The Duncan & Coe History Show with Mike Duncan. The show was announced in 2022, but its launch was delayed by two years as a result of complications in their respective personal lives.[19][20]
Coe is a senior fellow at New America, a bipartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.
Personal life
Coe was raised in Los Angeles, California. She moved to New York to go to Columbia and Sarah Lawrence. She has written about her grandparents, who helped raise her.[21] She cared for her grandmother at the end of her life.[22] Coe shared a birthday with her maternal grandfather, who is her daughter's namesake.[23] She has an older brother.[22]