Cultural Writing. African American Studies. Film and Music Criticism. Writing from a critical center that is melanin-based/feminist/pro-queer/unabashedly-leftist, LA-based writer Ernest Hardy (a Sundance Fellow and member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vibe, the LA Times, the LA Weekly and more) pens essays, interviews and reviews whose subject matter ranges from underground hip-hop and American indie film to modernFrench cinema; from revealing interviews with Warren Beatty, Meshell NdegeOcello and Les Nubians to an essay on gay rappers and queer rap audiences that pushes beyond the cliches of the media-stoked "down-low" phenomenon.

Author Hometown: Los Angeles, CA USA



About the author: Ernest Hardy writes about film and music from his home base of Los Angeles. His criticism has appeared in the LA Weekly, the LA Times, Vibe, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Source, Millennium Film Journal, Flaunt, Request, Minneapolis City Pages, and the reference books 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide, among others. He's written liner notes for Chuch D Presents: Louder Than a Bomb, the box-set Say It Loud: A Celebration of Black Music in America, Curtis Mayfield: Gospel, and the box-set Superstars of Seventies Soul; he is the winner of the 2006 ASAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence, honoring his liner notes for the Chet Baker CD, Career 1952-1988. A Sundance Fellow and a member of LAFCA (Los Angeles Film Critics Association), he's sat as a juror for the Sundance Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival and Los Angeles Outfest. He's also co-programmed the FUSION Film Festival in Los Angeles.