David Hajdu

David Hajdu is a cultural historian, critic, and educator. He is the author of seven books, including Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn (1997); Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina (2001); and Adrianne Geffel: A Fiction (2020). Four of his books have won the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing, and three were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the staff music critic for The Nation, and a professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, where he teaches in the MA Program in Arts and Culture, as well as a Presidential appointee to the National Council of the Humanities. Hajdu is also an accomplished librettist for concert music and jazz, with works performed at Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, and many other venues. His biography of Billy Strayhorn was named one of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time by The New York Times, and is in development for a feature film.