Photo credit: April Bowers Creative
I'm a writer, professor, and critic. I’ve published three books—Black Resonance, Donny Hathaway Live, and The Meaning of Soul—and I’m now writing a biography of Whitney Houston that reassesses her genius and impact. For a glimpse of that book, called Holding Lightning (Mariner Books/HarperCollins), you might read this essay I wrote for T Magazine.
In general, I speak with brilliant people to grasp the intricacies of American culture, with Black artists at the center. My profiles and essays appear in venues like the New Yorker online and T: The New York Times Style Magazine, where I’m a writer at large. Since 2019, I’ve taught at Vanderbilt, so I live in Nashville but can never stop telling people that I’m from the Northeast.
contact: emily.lordi@vanderbilt.edu