Background

Ann K. Powers was born on February 4, 1964, in Seattle, Washington, United States

Education

Powers received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and a Master of Arts degree in American literature from the University of California, Berkeley.

Career

Powers began her career working as an editor and columnist at San Francisco Weekly. Between 1992 and 1993, she wrote for The New York Times. From 1997 to 2001, Powers was a pop critic at The New York Times and before that worked as the senior editor at the Village Voice. Then, she was a senior critic at Blender and senior curator at Experience Music Project. She served as chief pop music critic at the Los Angeles Times from 2006 until 2011. Since April 2011, Powers has been writing for The Record, NPR's blog about finding, making, buying, sharing and talking about music.

Her writing extends beyond blogs, magazines and newspapers. Powers co-wrote Tori Amos: Piece By Piece, with Tori Amos, which was published in 2005. In 1999, Power's book, Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America, was published. She was an editor, with Evelyn McDonnell, of the 1995 book Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Rap and Pop and editor of Best Music Writing 2010.

Achievements

• Ann Powers is one of the nation's most notable music critics. She is NPR Music's critic and correspondent. She writes for NPR's music news blog, The Record, and she can be heard on NPR's newsmagazines and music programs.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music

    (In this sweeping history of popular music in the United S...)

    2017
  • Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop and Rap

    (From London to Los Angeles, from the pages of New Musical...)

    1995
  • Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America

    (There is a feeling of nostalgia that surrounds the idea o...)

    2000
  • Best Music Writing 2010

    (Best Music Writing has become one of the most eagerly awa...)

    2010
  • Piece by Piece 2005

Views

Peppered with anecdotes of personal history, Ann Powers's books have explored and interpreted American music and cultural movements, documenting trends and commenting on their implications on people's lives. Powers explores the definition of the term "bohemian" and how it has been redefined by the current culture in Weird like Us: My Bohemian America. Common misconceptions of the bohemian lifestyle are addressed, as well as the uneasy relationship existing between Bohemia and the mass-market culture. Powers wrote that Bohemia exists everywhere, no longer confined to coffeehouses, Greenwich Village, or San Francisco. Powers uses her own history, from her teenage years as a New Waver in Seattle to the underground music cultural scene in 1980s San Francisco, to her middle-class existence in New York, and mixes it with her observations and interviews with old friends.

Connections

Powers is married to Eric Weisbard, a music critic and professor of American studies at the University of Alabama. They have a daughter.

husband:

Eric Weisbard

Eric Weisbard is an American music critic known for founding the Pop Conference, which is hosted annually by the Museum of Pop Culture (formerly known as the EMP Museum).

colleague:

Evelyn McDonnell

Evelyn McDonnell is an American writer and academic. Writing primarily about popular culture, music and society, she "helped to forge a new kind of feminism for her generation."

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series (Volume 198) brings researchers the most recent data on the world's most popular authors.
  2010