The Freaks Came Out to Write

The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture

by Tricia Romano

A rollicking history of America’s most iconic weekly newspaper told through the voices of its legendary writers, editors, and photographers.

You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution co-founded by Norman Mailer, The Village Voice was the first newspaper to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and Off-Broadway with gravitas. It reported on the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers dismissed it as a gay disease. In 1979, the Voice’s Wayne Barrett uncovered Donald Trump as a corrupt con artist before anyone else was paying attention. It invented new forms of criticism and storytelling and revolutionized journalism, spawning hundreds of copycats.

With more than 200 interviews, including two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead, cultural critic Greg Tate, gossip columnist Michael Musto, and feminist writers Vivian Gornick and Susan Brownmiller, former Voice writer Tricia Romano pays homage to the paper that saved NYC landmarks from destruction and exposed corrupt landlords and judges. With interviews featuring post-punk band, Blondie, sportscaster Bob Costas, and drummer Max Weinberg, of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, in this definitive oral history, Romano tells the story of journalism, New York City and American culture—and the most famous alt-weekly of all time.

Hardcover | 608 pages | PublicAffairs | 2024

Lisa Kennedy writes on popular culture – and has for more than four decades. From 2003 to 2015, she was film critic and later theater critic for the Denver Post. She has been a juror for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, as well as a juror for the American Film Institute’s Top Movies, Film Independent’s Spirit Awards and the Gotham Awards. A freelancer, she has written for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Variety, American Theatre, Alta magazine, and Kirkus Reviews. She is currently at work on “Icarus Ascending,” a memoir. But, let’s be honest, none of that would have happened if not for her start at the Village Voice in the late ‘80s.