28 Jazz writers

Amiri Baraka, previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone.

Jason Berry is an American investigative reporter based in New Orleans, an author and film director. He is known for pioneering investigative reporting on sexual abuse in the priesthood of the Catholic Church.

Knut Conrad Borge was a Norwegian journalist and entertainer.

William Orval Crow is an American jazz bassist. Among other work, Crow was the long-term bassist in saxophonist Gerry Mulligan's bands in the 1950s and 1960s.

Charles Delaunay was a French author, jazz expert, co-founder and long-term leader of the Hot Club de France.

Leonard Geoffrey Feather was a British-born jazz pianist, composer, and producer, who was best known for his music journalism and other writing.

James Edwin Ferguson is an American guitarist, composer, journalist, and educator.

Gary Giddins is an American jazz critic and author. He wrote for The Village Voice from 1973; his "Weather Bird" column ended in 2003. In 1986 Gary Giddins and John Lewis created the American Jazz Orchestra which presented concerts using a jazz repertory with musicians such as Tony Bennett.

Ted Gioia is an American jazz critic and music historian. Gioia is an editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians and has authored a number of books on jazz such as The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire, The History of Jazz and Delta Blues. He is also a jazz musician and one of the founders of Stanford University's jazz studies program.

Ralph Joseph Gleason was an American jazz and popular music critic. He contributed for many years to the San Francisco Chronicle, was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and cofounder of the Monterey Jazz Festival. A pioneering rock critic, he helped the San Francisco Chronicle transition into the rock era.

William Christopher Handy was a composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues. Handy was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States. One of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, Handy did not create the blues genre but was the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a regional music style with a limited audience to a new level of popularity.

Nathan Irving Hentoff was an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media. Hentoff was a columnist for The Village Voice from 1958 to 2009. Following his departure from The Village Voice, Hentoff became a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, continued writing his music column for The Wall Street Journal, which published his works until his death. He often wrote on First Amendment issues, vigorously defending the freedom of the press.

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism and nationalism. A life-long Marxist, his socio-political convictions influenced the character of his work. His best-known works include his trilogy about what he called the "long 19th century", The Age of Extremes on the short 20th century, and an edited volume that introduced the influential idea of "invented traditions".

Orrin Keepnews was an American jazz writer and record producer known for founding Riverside Records and Milestone Records, for freelance work, and for his work at other labels.

Martin Kunzler is a German jazz bassist and music journalist. He gained particular fame through his rororo Jazz-Lexikon published by Rowohlt Verlag, which is now considered the standard German-language work on this musical genre.

Philip Arthur Larkin was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jill (1946) and A Girl in Winter (1947), and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). He contributed to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, articles gathered in All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961–71 (1985), and he edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse (1973). His many honours include the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. He was offered, but declined, the position of Poet Laureate in 1984, following the death of Sir John Betjeman.

Karl Lippegaus is a German music journalist, author and radio presenter.

Horst Lippmann was a German jazz musician, concert promoter, writer and television director, best known as promoter of the influential American Folk Blues Festival tours of Europe during and after the 1960s.

Colin Carhart McPhee was a Canadian composer and musicologist. He is best known for being the first Western composer to make an ethnomusicological study of Bali, and for the quality of that work. He also composed music influenced by that of Bali and Java decades before such compositions that were based on world music became widespread.

Bill Milkowski is an American jazz critic, journalist, and biographer. Since the 1970s he has written thousands of articles for magazines and album liner notes. He has written for DownBeat, JazzTimes, Jazziz, The Absolute Sound, Paste, Jazzthing and Guitar Club. He is the author of a biography of bassist Jaco Pastorius, a biography of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, an annotated history of jive music, and a collection of interviews.

Marc Myers is an American journalist, author, and historian and a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, where he writes on music and the arts. In 2007, he founded JazzWax, a top-ranked daily jazz blog that won the 2012, 2015 and 2018 Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year" award.

Carl Petter Opsahl is a Norwegian priest, jazz musician and journalist.

Harvey Lawrence Pekar was an American underground comic book writer, music critic, and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a well-received film adaptation of the same name.

Manfred Selchow is a jazz authority and author.

Alfred Bennett Spellman is an African-American poet, music critic, and arts administrator. Considered a part of the Black Arts movement, he first received attention for his book of poems entitled The Beautiful Days (1965). In 1966, he published a book on the then recent history of jazz entitled Four Lives in the Bebop Business. From 1975 to 2005, he worked as an arts administrator for the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been instrumental in supporting jazz in the United States.

John F. Stowell is an American jazz guitarist, composer, author, and lecturer.

Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.

Boris Vian was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer. Today he is remembered primarily for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan were bizarre parodies of criminal fiction, highly controversial at the time of their release due to their unconventional outlook.