Photo credit: April Wolf
Emily Lordi is a writer, professor, and author of the first full-scale cultural biography of Whitney Houston, Holding Lightning. The book will be released in September and is available for preorder now. Its spirit can be gleaned from this episode of Pop Pantheon and this essay for T magazine.
Lordi’s prior books are Black Resonance (2013), Donny Hathaway Live (33 1/3 series, 2016), and The Meaning of Soul (2020), which was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and shortlisted for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award.
Her writing and reporting aims to reveal the nuances of pop culture and performance, often setting Black artists at the center of American creative life. Her work appears in such venues as the New Yorker online, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and T: The New York Times Style Magazine, where she is a writer at large. A professor at Vanderbilt, she lives in Nashville, and hails from the Northeast.
contact: emily.lordi@vanderbilt.edu