Ken Tucker
American journalist
Ken Tucker
|
|
---|---|
Tucker in 2008
|
|
Born |
Kenneth Tucker
|
Nationality | American |
Education | B.A., English, New York University |
Occupation(s) | Arts critic, magazine editor and non-fiction book writer |
Years active | 1974 [1] — |
Website | kentucker.net |
Kenneth Tucker is an American arts, music and television critic, magazine editor, and non-fiction book writer.
Early life and education
Tucker was born in Manhattan , New York City , New York , and raised in Stamford , Connecticut . He earned a bachelor's degree in English from New York University .
Career
While attending NYU, he began writing freelance reviews for The Village Voice , SoHo Weekly News , and Rolling Stone . [2] From 1979 to 1983, Tucker was the rock critic for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner . From 1983 to 1990, he worked at The Philadelphia Inquirer , first as the newspaper’s rock critic, and then its television critic.
In 1990, he joined Entertainment Weekly (a Time Inc. publication) as a founding staffer. He was the magazine's television critic, [3] DVD critic and an editor-at-large until 2013, [4] except for one year (2005–06) as film critic at New York Magazine .
Since 1982, Tucker has been a rock and pop music critic for the National Public Radio (NPR) talk show Fresh Air with Terry Gross . [2] [5]
Tucker has appeared many times on television, including multiple appearances on The Today Show , Good Morning America , The Charlie Rose Show , and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson . [6] He appears in the 1984 documentary The Gospel According to Al Green . [6] He is interviewed on-camera in Cartoon College , a documentary about the history of comics.
Reception
Tucker’s reviews have provoked some notable responses from his subjects. In August 1980, Billy Joel , enraged by a negative review of his music Tucker had written in the L.A. Herald Examiner , tore up the review on stage during one of his concerts. [7]
Tucker’s negative reviews of Seth MacFarlane ’s animated series Family Guy resulted in a number of MacFarlane counter-criticisms, including a scene in which Stewie Griffin breaks the neck of an Entertainment Weekly writer widely assumed to be Tucker. [8]
Awards
For his critical writings, Tucker was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism in 1984, [9] the first rock critic to become a Pulitzer finalist. [10] He won a National Magazine Award in 1995 [11] and has twice won a Deems Taylor Award by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). [12] [13]
Writings
Articles and essays
Tucker has written frequently about poetry and comic books , most notably for The New York Times Book Review [14] [15] and The Best American Poetry blog. [16] His 1985 New York Times review [17] of the serialized portions of Art Spiegelman ’s then-work-in-progress Maus is considered a factor in the mainstream acceptance of graphic novels and the publication of Maus by Pantheon Books . [18]
He has contributed essays to the following anthologies:
- Miller, Jim, ed. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll , 1st Ed., New York: Rolling Stone Press, 1976. ISBN 0394403274
- Country: The Music and the Musicians , New York: Abbeville Press, 1988. ISBN 0896598683
- Cooking and Stealing: The TIN HOUSE Non-Fiction Reader , New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2004. ISBN 1582344868
Books
- Scarface Nation – The Ultimate Gangster Movie and How It Changed America , New York City, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2008. ISBN 978-0-312-33059-0
- Tucker, Ken; Stokes, Geoffrey; Ward, Ed. Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll , New York: Summit, 1986. ISBN 0671544381
- Kissing Bill O'Reilly, Roasting Miss Piggy – 100 Things To Love and Hate About TV , New York City, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-312-33057-6
See also
- List of American print journalists
- List of American writers
- List of critics
- List of National Public Radio personnel
- List of non-fiction writers
References
- ↑ Tucker, Ken (23 December 1974). "Notes from the Academy". The Village Voice .
- 1 2 Ken Tucker Archived 2011-10-17 at the Wayback Machine at Rock Critic Archives
- ↑ Tucker, Ken (17 May 1991). "Our Sons" . ew.com . Retrieved 23 August 2018 .
- ↑ Moses, Lucia (13 February 2013). "Ken Tucker Leaves Entertainment Weekly" . AdWeek . Retrieved 18 December 2013 .
- ↑ Ken Tucker at NPR
- 1 2 Ken Tucker at IMDb
- ↑ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. Billy Joel Biography at Rolling Stone (citing All Music Guide )
- ↑ Graham, Mark (4 December 2008). "Seth MacFarlane Named 'Smartest Person on TV,' Ken Tucker Promptly Keels Over" . Vulture blog . New York City: New York Media . Retrieved 20 December 2012 .
- ↑ Pulitzer Prize finalists for 1984 at Pulitzer.org
- ↑ Powers, Ann (19 April 2011). "Fiction Pulitzer Sneaks Music Writing In Through The Back Door" . The Record . NPR.org . Retrieved 20 December 2012 .
- ↑ Warren, James (13 April 1995). "Another Reason To Celebrate: Entertainment Weekly Garners Top Honors At National Magazine Awards" . Chicago Tribune . Retrieved 20 December 2012 .
- ↑ 35th Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Award Recipients , ASCAP , 2002.
- ↑ 37th Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Award Recipients Archived 2011-08-27 at the Wayback Machine , ASCAP, 2004.
- ↑ Tucker, Ken (7 October 2007). "A Formal Feeling" . The New York Times Book Review . Retrieved 20 December 2012 .
- ↑ Tucker, Ken (20 March 2005). " 'Rebels on the Backlot': Fight Club" . The New York Times Book Review . Retrieved 20 December 2012 .
- ↑ About Us at The Best American Poetry
- ↑ Tucker, Ken (26 May 1985). "Cats, Mice and History - The Avant-Carde of the Comic Strip" . The New York Times . Retrieved 20 December 2012 .
- ↑ Heller, Steven (15 August 2011). "Times' Comics on a Roll" . Imprint . Archived from the original on 2011-08-16 . Retrieved 20 December 2012 .
External links
- Official website Archived 2010-03-02 at the Wayback Machine
- Ken Tucker's TV , Tucker's blog at Entertainment Weekly
- Staff (undated). "Ken Tucker – Editor-at-Large, Entertainment Weekly and EW.com" , Entertainment Weekly . Retrieved January 9, 2012.
- Ken Tucker at IMDb
International | |
---|---|
National |