Author and theater critic Hilton Als has been named an inaugural Presidential Visiting Scholar at Princeton University for the 2020-21 academic year. The visiting scholars program, which comes into effect in the fall, is intended to support visitors from academic or professional fields who can contribute to the University’s diversity, broadly defined. The visiting scholars program is coordinated by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, with support from the Office of the President and the Office of the Provost.
Hilton Als became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1994 and a theater critic in 2002. He is the author of the books The Women (1996) and White Girls, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Lambda Literary Award in 2014. Previously, he was a staff writer for the Village Voice and an editor-at-large at Vibe.
Als won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2017. Among his many honors, he also was awarded a Guggenheim for creative writing in 2000 and the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism in 2002. In 2016, he received Lambda Literary’s Trustee Award for Excellence in Literature. In 1997, he was awarded first prize in Magazine Critique/Review and Magazine Arts and Entertainment from the New York Association of Black Journalists.
In the fall, Als will teach the course “Yaas Queen: Gay Men, Straight Women, and the Literature, Art, Film of Hagdom.” The course is crosslisted with the Lewis Center’s Programs in Creative Writing and Theater as well as the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. He also will mentor students in fiction, poetry and playwriting.
Read more about Princeton University’s Visiting Scholars Program at Princeton.edu »
