Hilton Als (born 1960) is an American writer and theater critic. He is a teaching professor at theUniversity of California, Berkeley,^[1] an associate professor of writing atColumbia University^[2] and a staff writer and theater critic forThe New Yorker.^[3] He is a former staff writer forThe Village Voice and former editor-at-large atVibe magazine.

Hilton Als was born in New York City, with roots inBarbados.^[4] Raised inBrownsville, Brooklyn, he has four older sisters and one younger brother.^[5] He studied toward a bachelor's in art history fromColumbia University.^[6]

His 1996 bookThe Women^[7] focuses on his mother (who raised him in Brooklyn),Dorothy Dean, andOwen Dodson, who was a mentor and lover of Als.^[8][9][10]In the book, Als explores his identification of the confluence of his ethnicity, gender and sexuality, moving from identifying as a "Negress" and then an "Auntie Man", aBarbadian term for homosexuals.^[10] His 2013 bookWhite Girls continued to explore race, gender, identity in a series of essays about everything from the AIDS epidemic toRichard Pryor's life and work.

Als received aGuggenheim fellowship in 2000 for creative writing and the 2002–03George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.^[11] In 2004 he won theBerlin Prize of theAmerican Academy in Berlin, which provided him half a year of free working and studying inBerlin.^[12]In addition to Columbia, he has taught atSmith College,Wellesley College,Wesleyan University, andYale University, and his work has also appeared inThe Nation,The Believer, and theNew York Review of Books.

In 2017, he was awarded thePulitzer Prize for Criticism: "For bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context, particularly the shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race."^[13]The Guardian wrote about him a year later: "Since winning his Pulitzer prize for criticism, Hilton Als has risen more visibly to the role of public intellectual, one that he plays particularly well."^[14]

As an art curator, Als has been responsible for exhibitions including the group showForces in Nature (featuring work by such artists asNjideka Akunyili Crosby,Peter Doig,Chris Ofili,Celia Paul,Tal R,Sarah Sze,Kara Walker, andFrancesca Woodman) in 2015,^[15] and an exhibition of work from theManhattan years of portraitistAlice Neel, entitledAlice Neel, Uptown, atDavid Zwirner Gallery in New York City andVictoria Miro Gallery in London (May 18 – July 29, 2017).^[16][17][18]

In June 2020, Als was named an inaugural Presidential Visiting Scholar atPrinceton University for the 2020–2021 academic year.^[19]

In 2024, Als guest curatedThis Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance,^[20][21] at theNational Portrait Gallery; the exhibit included works of byBeauford Delaney,Bernard Gotfryd, andFaith Ringgold among others.

• 2013National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) shortlist forWhite Girls^[22]
• 2016Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Nonfiction)^[23]
• 2016Pulitzer Prize (Criticism)^[24][25]
• 2017Langston Hughes Medal,City College of New York
• 2018 Honorary Doctorate,The New School.^[26]
• In June 2020, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the first LGBTQPride parade,Queerty magazine named him among the fifty heroes "leading the nation toward equality, acceptance, and dignity for all people".^[27][28]
• 2024 Honorary Doctorate,Syracuse University.^[29]

• The Women. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 1996.ISBN 978-0374525293.
• "GWTW". InAllen, James, ed. (2000).Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Twin Palms Publishers. pp. 38–45.ISBN 978-0944092699.
• Sills, Vaughn (2010).Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens. Foreword. San Antonio: Trinity University Press.ISBN 978-1595340641.
• White Girls. San Francisco: McSweeney's. 2013.ISBN 978-1940450254.
• Opie, Catherine (2015).700 Nimes Road. Contributor. New York: Prestel Publishing.ISBN 978-3791354255.
• My Pinup: A Paean to Prince. New York: New Directions. 2022.ISBN 978-0811234498.
• Joan Didion: What She Means. New York: DelMonico Books. 2022.ISBN 978-1636810577. (Companion book to theHammer Museum exhibition of the same name)

• LGBT culture in New York City
• List of LGBT writers
• List of LGBT people from New York City
• NYC Pride March

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