Ken Tucker

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''.Ken Tucker
at Rock Critic Archives 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, DVD critic and an editor-at-large until 2013, 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''.Ken Tucker
at NPR

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''. He appears in the 1984 documentary ''The Gospel According to Al Green''. 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.

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.

Awards

For his critical writings, Tucker was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism in 1984,Pulitzer Prize finalists for 1984
at Pulitzer.org the first rock critic to become a Pulitzer finalist. He won a National Magazine Award in 1995 and has twice won a Deems Taylor Award by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

Writings

Articles and essays

Tucker has written frequently about poetry and comic books, most notably for ''The New York Times Book Review'' and ''The Best American Poetry'' blog. His 1985 ''New York Times'' review 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.

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.
* ''Country: The Music and the Musicians'', New York: Abbeville Press, 1988.
* ''Cooking and Stealing: The TIN HOUSE Non-Fiction Reader'', New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2004.

Books

* '' Scarface Nation – The Ultimate Gangster Movie and How It Changed America'', New York City, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2008.
* Tucker, Ken; Stokes, Geoffrey; Ward, Ed. ''Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll'', New York: Summit, 1986.
* ''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.

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

External links

Official website

''Ken Tucker's TV''
Tucker's blog at ''Entertainment Weekly''
* Staff (undated)
"Ken TuckerEditor-at-Large, Entertainment Weekly and EW.com"
''Entertainment Weekly''. Retrieved January 9, 2012.
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Tucker, Ken
Place of birth missing (living people)
20th-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American film critics
American magazine editors
American music critics
American television critics
American magazine writers
NPR personalities
1953 births
Living people