David Hajdu
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David Hajdu is the music critic for The New Republic and a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
He was born and raised in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. First publication: Dave's News, made in the kitchen at age ten, 1965. First professional work: illustrations for The Easton Express, 1972. College: NYU. In 1979, he started writing for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone. He was the founding editor of Video Review magazine (1980-1984), and later a top editor at Entertainment Weekly (1990-1999). In the late 1980s, he started teaching, at The New School. He has written for The American Scholar, The Atlantic Monthly, BookForum, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, and other publications. He taught at the University of Chicago (as nonfiction writer in residence) and Syracuse University before Columbia.
Hajdu is the author of three books: Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn (1996), Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariņa and Richard Fariņa, and The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America (2008). His first two books were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and both books won the ASCAP Deems-Taylor Award. His books have also been finalists for the LAMBDA Literary Award and the Firecracker Book Award. As an editor and magazine writer, Hajdu has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award several times, and his articles and essays have appeared in Best Music Writing 2000, Best American Magazine Writing 2003, and OK You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors.
Hajdu is the father of three — Jacob, Victoria, and Nathan Hajdu — and he is married to the singer and actor Karen Oberlin. He and his family live in Manhattan.