Chatelain is currently writing a book about race and fast food, From Sit-In to Drive-Thru: Black America in the Age of Fast Food (under contract, Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton).  Her first book South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration was published by Duke University Press in 2015. Chatelain co-edited, with Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson, Staging a Dream: Untold Stories and Transatlantic Legacies of the March on Washington (2015).

Chatelain is a regular commenter on current events and social issues across a variety of media platforms. She also created the Twitter campaign #Fergusonsyllabus in August 2014.