Introduction
David Hajdu is an American columnist, author and professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was the music critic for The New Republic for 12 years and is music editor at The Nation.
Early life
Of Hungarian and Italian descent, Hajdu was born and raised in Phillipsburg, New Jersey and attended New York University, where he majored in journalism.
His first professional work was illustrating for The Easton Express in 1972. He started writing for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone in 1979, and was the founding editor of Video Review magazine, where he worked from 1980 to 1984. In the late 1980s he began teaching at The New School, and was an editor at Entertainment Weekly from 1990 to 1999. He has taught at the University of Chicago (as nonfiction writer in residence), Syracuse University, and Columbia University, where he is an associate professor of journalism.
His biographical work includes Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn, and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. His nonfiction work includes The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, and Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture.
Awards
- 1997 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award: Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn
- 2002 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award: Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina
- Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award: Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina
- Finalist, Firecracker Book Award: Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina
- 2002 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award: Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture
- ^ "Prof. David Hajdu wins Deems Taylor Award for music criticism". Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. November 17, 2010. Retrieved December 20, 2012.
- ^ "Critics Announce Book Award Finalists". The New York Times. January 29, 2002. Retrieved June 26, 2008.
Personal life
Hajdu has three children, Jacob, Victoria, and Nathan, and lives in Manhattan with his wife, singer and actress Karen Oberlin.