FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 3, 2024
Austin, Texas—The University of Texas Press is delighted to announce that Hanif Abdurraqib has joined us as a series editor for the American Music Series, where he will work closely with existing series editors Jessica Hopper and Charles Hughes, along with UT Press editor-in-chief Casey Kittrell. Abdurraqib’s second book of nonfiction, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, was published as part of the American Music Series in 2019. An instant New York Times bestseller, Go Ahead in the Rain was longlisted for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. Abdurraqib remains a great friend of the press, providing invaluable support and encouraging other authors to consider publishing their books here. “Hanif’s work has been a beacon but the generosity of it, I think, has also become a kind of editorial practice that helps guide this series,” comments Kittrell. “It feels both natural for him to be here, and so absurdly thrilling I pinch myself at least once a day.”
In addition to Abdurraqib’s advocacy for UT Press, Go Ahead in the Rain itself introduced the work of the American Music Series to countless readers and writers. As Jessica Hopper puts it, “Authors and artists read that book and said, ‘I want to break the barriers of what a music book is supposed to be.’” Hopper continues, “Having Hanif return as an editorial force just a few years after Go Ahead in the Rain kicked off a new era, not just for the American Music Series, but for music journalism and the art of criticism, is really a full-circle gift. Go Ahead in the Rain showed folks: this is the kind of work we believe in; this is the world of music books that you can dream into being here.”
In his role as a series editor, Abdurraqib will help shape future directions for the series and usher in new voices doing essential, pathbreaking work like his own. “It’s an honor to play a part in this brilliant and adventurous series, which was once a home to my own work, and has remained a place where long-form music writing can flourish,” says Abdurraqib. “I hope to honor the legacy of broad vision, curiosity, and rigor that has been vital to the engine of the series.”
Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of four books of nonfiction and two collections of poetry and is the curator of the website ’68 to ‘05. He is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a winner of the Windham-Campbell Prize, and a recipient of an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, among other honors. His most recent book, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, was also a New York Times bestseller. “Hanif Abdurraqib is one of the best and most important writers of our moment,” says Charles Hughes. “This is a thrilling opportunity to work with a brilliant thinker, listener, and reader whose presence will enrich the American Music Series in so many ways.” According to Hopper, “Hanif’s work within Go Ahead in the Rain, and everything that he has done since, invites so many folks in to music and into music writing—in from the margins and into the center of the story. To witness him just gloriously steamroll all these old gatekeeping ideas with the sheer magnitude of his talent, one book and byline at a time—well, it’s one of the greatest joys of my professional life to see all that his work transforms, and what it begs us to imagine.”
Hopper, a longtime series co-editor, is an author of several books and an award-winning director and producer of music documentaries. Charles Hughes is the author of Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South and Why Bushwick Bill Matters, and he teaches at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. The American Music Series began in 2012 and exists to serve enthusiasts of American popular music. Books in the series consider important, enduring, and under-recognized aspects of our most dynamic art form. The series seeks to encompass the full diversity of people, genres, and forces that have shaped American popular music, and to that end, publishes cultural histories, essay collections, critical artist biographies, and memoirs, as well as other forms of inventive storytelling. The wide-ranging series includes Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay’s Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan, which Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield dubbed “one of the sharpest, funniest, and best books ever about any rock artist”; Margo Price’s Maybe We’ll Make It: A Memoir; Sasha Geffen’s Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary, praised as a “revolutionary art object” by the writer Kiese Laymon; and Francesca T. Royster’s Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions.
Among the titles coming soon in the series: Franz Nicolay’s Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music, a close look at the lives of working musicians; Niko Stratis’s The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman, a memoir-in-essays on transness, dad rock, and the music that saves us; an oral history of Texas punk from the writer Pat Blashill; and Seth Neblett’s celebration of the women of Parliament-Funkadelic. If you have a project that you’d like to propose to the series editors, please write to ams@utpress.utexas.edu.
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For More Information:
Joel Pinckney
Publicity and Communications Manager & Assistant Marketing Manager
University of Texas Press
jpinckney@utpress.utexas.edu
512-232-7634
