Seth Abramson | |
|---|---|
 Abramson in 2016 | |
| Born | (1976-10-31)October 31, 1976 (age 49) Concord, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Occupation | Attorney, professor, author |
| Education | Dartmouth College (BA) Harvard University (JD) University of Iowa (MFA) University of Wisconsin–Madison (MA,PhD) |
| Genre | Curatorial journalism, meta journalism, poetry |
| Literary movement | Metamodernism |
| Website | |
| www | |
Seth Abramson (born October 31, 1976) is an Americanprofessor, attorney,author, political columnist, musician, andpoet. He is the editor of theBest American Experimental Writing series and wrote a trilogy of nonfiction works detailing the foreign policy agenda and political scandals of presidentDonald Trump.
Abramson was born to a Jewish family and raised inActon, Massachusetts.[1][2] He is a graduate ofDartmouth College (1998),Harvard Law School (2001), theIowa Writers' Workshop (2009), and the doctoral program inEnglish atUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison (2010; 2016).[3]
Abramson was atrial attorney for the New Hampshire Public Defender from 2001 to 2007. Abramson became an assistant professor of communication arts and sciences atUniversity of New Hampshire in 2015 and was made affiliate faculty at theNew Hampshire Institute of Art in 2018.[4] His teaching areas include digital journalism, post-internet cultural theory, post-internet writing, and legal advocacy.
Abramson has written for publications likeThe Washington Post,Dallas Morning News,The Seattle Times,Newsweek,Indiewire, andThe Guardian. In 2011,Publishers Weekly wrote that he had "picked up a very large following as a blogger and commentator, covering poetry, politics, and higher education, and generating a controversial,U.S. News–style ranking of graduate programs in writing."[5] During the Trump administration, Abramson was aCNN legal analyst.[6]
During the2016 Democratic primary race betweenHillary Clinton andBernie Sanders, Abramson supported Sanders.[7] He authored whatJonathan Chait ofNew York Magazine called "a cult-favorite series of Bernie [Sanders] delegate-math fan fiction."[8] Philip Bump ofThe Washington Post took issue with Abramson's analyses, calling them "empty theory, unproven...but innovative."[9] Writing inThe Chicago Tribune, Stephen Stromberg called Abramson a "Sanders zealot...[in] reality-denial."[10]The Atlantic, citing an article by Abramson in which he referred to his writing on the Democratic primary as "experimental journalism", attributed Abramson's articles not to his political leanings but his self-identification as a "metamodernist creative writer."[11][12]Politico concurred, referring to Abramson's political commentary as "verses from the abstract".[13]
After the2016 U.S. presidential election, Abramson received widespread attention for hisTwitter threads alleging collusion between theTrump campaign and foreign governments, especially Russia, but alsoSaudi Arabia, theUAE, andIsrael.[14] According toThe Washington Post:
"After trying for many years to expand his business empire into Russia, Abramson asserts, Trump visited Moscow in 2013 to personally meet agents of Russian President Vladmir Putin, using his beauty pageant as cover. There, Abramson writes, a secret deal was struck: Putin agreed to open up his country's rich real estate market to Trump, and Trump agreed to campaign for president while promoting pro-Russian policies."[15]
In November 2018, Abramson published theNew York Times bestselling bookProof of Collusion (Simon & Schuster), which sought to establish "proof of collusion in the Trump-Russia case."[16]Kirkus Reviews called the book "spirited, thorough, and thunderously foreboding."[17] A contrary view appeared in theHerald (Scotland), noting that "suggestive juxtapositions notwithstanding, we end up with something closer to the Scottish 'not proven' verdict with its unique mix of moral conviction of guilt and inability to conclusively prove the case."[18]
A sequel toProof of Collusion,Proof of Conspiracy, was published bySt. Martin's Press in September 2019, and was also aNew York Times bestseller.[19] The final book in the Proof trilogy,Proof of Corruption, was published by St. Martin's Press in September 2020 and was named aUSA Today bestseller.[20]Kirkus Reviews calledProof of Corruption "careful and exhaustive", concluding that it makes a "strong case for Trump's outsized, boundless corruption."[21]
In October 2020, Abramson, formerVice contributing editorThomas Morton, and Connect3 Media (a division ofCineflix) published a ten-episode, limited-series pre-election podcast,Proof: A Pre-election Podcast Special, to summarize key aspects of the "Proof" book trilogy. Abramson thereafter launched an online publication entitledProof.[22]
As a biographer ofElon Musk, Abramson has been critical of the tech entrepreneur, whose views and behavior his writing has framed as extremist.[23]
Abramson has published a number of poetry books and anthologies.Colorado Review calledNortherners, Abramson's second collection of poetry, "alternately expansive and deeply personal...of crystalline beauty and complexity", terming Abramson "a major American voice",[24] andNotre Dame Review echoed the sentiment.[25]
Abramson and poetJesse Damiani have been series co-editors of the annual anthology of innovative verse,Best American Experimental Writing, since its inception with Omnidawn in 2012.[26][27] The series was picked up byWesleyan University Press in 2014.[28] Guest editors for the series have includedCole Swensen (2014),Douglas Kearney (2015),Charles Bernstein andTracie Morris (2016),Myung Mi Kim (2018), andCarmen Maria Machado andJoyelle McSweeney (2019).[29]
Between 2007 and 2014, Abramson authoredThe MFA Research Project (MRP), a website that published indexes of creative writing Master of Fine Arts (MFA) programs based on surveys and other data.[30] Indexes appearing on the MRP included ordered listings of program popularity, funding, selectivity, fellowship placement, job placement, student-faculty ratio, application cost, application response times, application and curriculum requirements, and foundation dates. The MRP also published surveys of current MFA applicants and various creative writing programs.
The Chronicle of Higher Education termed thePoets & Writers national assessment methodology "comprehensive" and "the only MFA ranking regime".[31][32] Writing forThe Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945,Hank Lazer described Abramson's project as "a daring and data-rich endeavor".[33]The Missouri Review observed that Abramson, along with novelistTom Kealey, "had done a tremendous amount of work to peel back the layers of MFA programs and get applicants to make informed decisions."[34]
The data was not without its critics. In September 2011, a critical open letter signed by professors from undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs was published.[35] Data from the MRP had been regularly published byPoets & Writers between 2008 and 2013. The magazine's Editorial Director, Mary Gannon, said of Abramson, the rankings' primary researcher, that he "has been collecting data about applicants' preferences and about MFA programs for five years, and we stand behind his integrity."[36]
Publishers Weekly describes Abramson as "serious and ambitious...uncommonly interested in general statements, in hard questions, and harder answers, about how to live."[37] Abramson won the 2008 J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize fromPoetry. EditorDon Share said of Abramson's "What I Have", "The poem absorbs certain details but doesn't fasten upon them the way poets are tempted to do; it's not adjectival, it's not descriptive, it's not painting a kind of canvas with scenery on it, and yet those details are really fascinating."[38]
In 2019, aPlayboy interviewer said, "Abramson helped pioneer the literary form of theTwitter 'thread'" and, speaking of his 2018 bookProof of Collusion, credited "the eccentric New Hampshirite" for "his meticulous attention to the evidence of Trumpworld's alleged collusion with the Kremlin."[39] His style of writing was described byPlayboy as "left-brainedgonzo".[39] Avi Selk ofThe Washington Post wrote that Abramson became "virally popular by reframing a complex tangle of public reporting on the Russia scandal into a story so simple it can be laid out in daily tweets", that his analysis has "many leaps", and that his sources "range in quality from investigative news articles to off-the-wall Facebook posts and tweets from Tom Arnold".[15]
Writers atThe New Republic andThe Atlantic have described Abramson as a conspiracy theorist.[40][41]Ben Mathis-Lilley ofSlate argues that Abramson is "not making things up" but "recycling information you could find on any news site and adding sinister what-if hypotheticals to create conclusions that he refers to...as 'investigatory analyses.'"[42] An article inColumbia Journalism Review similarly critiqued Abramson's method of "curatorial journalism".[43]
Other media outlets have supported Abramson's analyses.The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that Abramson often "feuds with anti-Trump conspiracy theorists whom he sees linking to dubious sources and making claims without evidence."[44]Virginia Heffernan writes inPolitico that Abramson's "theory-testing" is "urgently important".[45]Der Spiegel calls Abramson "a quintessential American figure: an underdog who became an involuntary hero."[46]The New York Observer writes that "events like Trump's 2013 trip to Russia for Miss Universe were covered extensively on Abramson's feed prior to the mainstream media catching on, a fact that has given him a reputation for being early to connect events within the broader Russia story."[47]
Since July 2023, Abramson has been releasing albums under the pseudonym Hounds.[48][49]
Nonfiction
Poetry
Anthology
Reference
Academic
Prose
Poetry
Lyric Albums (as Hounds)
Lyric EPs (as Hounds)
Lyric Compilations (as Hounds)
Protest Compilations (as Hounds)
Remix Compilations (as Hounds)
Retro Compilations (as Hounds)
Instrumental Albums (as Hounds)
Instrumental Compilations (as Hounds)
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