Margo Jefferson

Margo Lillian Jefferson (born October 17, 1947) is an American writer and academic.

Biography

Jefferson received her B.A. from Brandeis University, where she graduated ''cum laude'', and her M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She became an associate editor at ''Newsweek'' in 1973 and stayed at the magazine until 1978. She then served as an assistant professor at the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at New York University from 1979 to 1983 and from 1989 to 1991. Since then she has taught at the Columbia University School of the Arts, where she is now professor of professional practice in writing. Jefferson also taught at The New School's Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts.

She joined ''The New York Times'' in 1993, initially as a book reviewer, then went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1995."Margo Jefferson of The New York Times"
The 1995 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Criticism, The Pulitzer Prizes. She also served as the newspaper's theater critic in 2004. In addition to the ''Times'', she has written for '' Vogue'', ''New York Magazine'', ''The Nation'', and '' Guernica''.

Jefferson has a longstanding interest in jazz, and appeared in Ken Burns' 2001 documentary series about the history of the music.

Writing

Jefferson's 2006 book, ''On Michael Jackson'', was described by ''Publishers Weekly'' as a "slim, smart volume of cultural analysis." According to Lucy Scholes in ''The Independent'': "The excellent ''On Michael Jackson'' is not a straightforward biography, nor is it an attempt to claim either his innocence or his guilt when it comes to the child abuse scandals that, although he was acquitted, haunt his afterlife. A 'deciphering' is probably the most accurate description of the book, the shrewd playfulness of Jefferson's prose the perfect vehicle for analysis that's as smart as it is readable."

Jefferson's autobiographical book, '' Negroland: A Memoir'', was published in 2015. It was described by Dwight Garner in ''The New York Times'' as a "powerful and complicated memoir", and by Margaret Busby in ''The Sunday Times'' as "utterly compelling", while Anita Sethi wrote in ''The Observer'': "Jefferson fascinatingly explores how her personal experience intersected with politics, from the civil rights movement to feminism, as well as history before her birth." Tracy K. Smith wrote in ''The New York Times'': "The visible narrative apparatus of 'Negroland' highlights its author's extreme vulnerability in the face of her material. It also makes apparent the all-too-often invisible fallout of our nation's ongoing obsession with race and class: Namely, that living a life as an exemplar of black excellence — and living with the survivor's guilt that often accompanies such excellence — can have a psychic effect nearly as deadening and dehumanizing as that of racial injustice itself." In 2016 ''Negroland'' was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and won the National Book Critics Circle Award

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