Author Guide · Essays & Criticism
Books Written by
Hilton Als opens White Girls (2013) with an eighty-four-page essay about a friend he calls only “SL”, a straight photographer he met at The Village Voice in the early 1980s and was in love with. Born in Brooklyn in 1960 to a mother from Barbados, Als became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1994 and its chief theatre critic in 2013, and in 2017 won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. His books are few and short, and they mix memoir, portraiture and criticism: his mother, Richard Pryor, Prince, Joan Didion, the paintings of Alice Neel. This guide covers his 5 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 1996–2022 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Hilton Als has published five books under his name: The Women (1996), White Girls (2013), Alice Neel, Uptown (2017), Joan Didion: What She Means (2022) and My Pinup (2022). Start with White Girls, his essay collection and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; then go back to The Women to see where his mix of memoir and portrait began.
Where to Start with Hilton Als
If you want his defining book
→ White Girls (2013) — the essays on Capote, Pryor, Michael Jackson and SL.
If you want his most personal book
→ The Women (1996) — his mother, his mentor Owen Dodson and Dorothy Dean.
If you want something you can read in an hour
→ My Pinup (2022) — 48 pages on Prince.
If you want him writing about art
→ Alice Neel, Uptown (2017) — short essays on Alice Neel’s Harlem portraits.
5 Hilton Als Books, in Order
The Women
His first book, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is three portraits. Dorothy Dean was a Black Radcliffe and Harvard graduate who became a hostess to New York’s gay white cultural elite in the 1960s and 1970s; Owen Dodson was a playwright of the Harlem Renaissance and Als’s mentor and lover; the third is his own mother, who came to Brooklyn from Barbados at seventeen and raised six children. Als has said he thought he was writing his family “a love letter”.
White Girls
An essay collection from McSweeney’s that opens with “Tristes Tropiques”, about his friendship with “SL” and the death of his partner “K” from AIDS in 1992. Other pieces take on Truman Capote, Louise Brooks, Flannery O’Connor, Eminem, Michael Jackson and André Leon Talley; “You and Whose Army?” is narrated by Richard Pryor’s sister. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism.
Alice Neel, Uptown
Published by David Zwirner Books with the 2017 exhibitions Als curated at David Zwirner in New York and Victoria Miro in London. It gathers Alice Neel’s paintings and drawings of people of colour in uptown New York, well-known sitters and neighbours alike, with a short essay by Als on each work and a foreword by Jeremy Lewison.
Joan Didion: What She Means
The catalogue of the exhibition Als organised at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (October 2022 to January 2023): more than 200 works by about 60 artists, arranged in four chapters following the places Didion lived. It includes a new essay by Als and three little-known Didion essays collected together for the first time.
My Pinup
A 48-page essay from New Directions on Prince as a queer Black icon, first published in a different form in Harper’s in 2012. Als writes about the 1988 album Lovesexy, Prince’s fight with the record industry in the 1990s, and a 2004 backstage interview in which Prince talked about his faith as a Jehovah’s Witness.
In What Order to Read Hilton Als
The books do not depend on one another, and there are only five, so publication order works. It also shows the shape of his career: two essay books seventeen years apart, then three shorter books in which he writes about other artists, two of them made with exhibitions he curated.
Most readers start with White Girls, because it holds the widest range of his subjects. The Women is the more personal book and reads differently once you know the later essays. Much of his writing is still uncollected in The New Yorker, including the theatre reviews that won the Pulitzer.
A reading path
1. White Girls (2013)
2. The Women (1996)
3. My Pinup (2022)
4. Alice Neel, Uptown (2017)
5. Joan Didion: What She Means (2022)
Other Books Hilton Als Contributed To
Beyond the 5 key books: 3 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Essays and forewords in other books
3
3 books · 2000–2015
- 2000Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in Americahis essay “GWTW”, later collected in White Girls
- 2010Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardensforeword
- 2015700 Nimes Roadcontribution to the photobook of Elizabeth Taylor’s home
The years · 1960–2024
Quick facts about Hilton Als
- Known for
- Hilton Als is known for essays that mix memoir, criticism and portraiture, and for the theatre criticism at The New Yorker that won him the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
- 1960
- Born in Brooklyn, New York
- 1994
- Staff writer at The New Yorker
- 1996
- The Women
- 2013
- White Girls
- 2024
- Curates a Baldwin show at the National Portrait Gallery
- Born
- 1960, Brooklyn, New York; his mother came from Barbados
- Education
- Columbia University, art history
- Worked
- The Village Voice and Vibe, then The New Yorker from 1994; chief theatre critic from 2013
- Prizes
- Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (2017); Windham-Campbell Prize (2016); Guggenheim Fellowship (2000)
- Teaches
- University of California, Berkeley; formerly Columbia, Yale and others
- Curated
- Alice Neel, Uptown (2017), Joan Didion: What She Means (2022)
The red mark is 2013: White Girls, his essay collection and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.
How Hilton Als Writes: Memoir, Portrait and Criticism at Once
Als writes hybrids. The Paris Review describes both The Women and White Girls as mixes of memoir, portraiture and criticism, and he has called the essay “a form without a form”. A piece that starts as a portrait of Truman Capote or Richard Pryor can turn into a piece about his own family, and the other way round.
He often writes in other people’s voices. “You and Whose Army?” in White Girls is a monologue spoken by Richard Pryor’s sister, and the opening essay hides its real subject behind the initials “SL”. He has said he does not see fiction as an alternate world but as what the imagination takes from the real one.
His criticism looks outward from the work. The Pulitzer board praised his theatre reviews for putting “stage dramas within a real-world cultural context”, and his exhibitions on Alice Neel, Joan Didion and James Baldwin treat a life and its surroundings as part of the art. For the writers he keeps returning to, see the guides to James Baldwin and Joan Didion below.
Frequently asked questions about Hilton Als’s books
How many books has Hilton Als written?
Five books under his name: The Women (1996), White Girls (2013), Alice Neel, Uptown (2017), Joan Didion: What She Means (2022) and My Pinup (2022). Two of them accompany exhibitions he curated. He has also contributed essays and forewords to other people’s books.
What are Hilton Als’s books in order?
The Women (1996), White Girls (2013), Alice Neel, Uptown (2017), Joan Didion: What She Means (2022) and My Pinup: A Paean to Prince (2022).
Where should I start with Hilton Als?
With White Girls (2013). It has the widest range of his subjects, from Truman Capote and Michael Jackson to his own friendships. If you want something shorter first, My Pinup is 48 pages.
What is Hilton Als’s most famous book?
White Girls (2013), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism. His first book, The Women (1996), is the other one most often discussed.
Did Hilton Als win a Pulitzer Prize?
Yes. He won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his theatre reviews in The New Yorker, cited “for bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context”. He also won a Windham-Campbell Prize for nonfiction in 2016.
What is White Girls about?
It is a collection of essays rather than a single argument, published by McSweeney’s in 2013. Its subjects include Truman Capote, Louise Brooks, Flannery O’Connor, Eminem, Michael Jackson and Richard Pryor. The long opening essay, “Tristes Tropiques”, is about his friendship with a man he calls SL.
Who are the women in The Women?
Dorothy Dean, a Harvard-educated Black woman who was a fixture of gay white New York society in the 1960s and 1970s; Owen Dodson, the Harlem Renaissance playwright who was Als’s mentor and lover; and Als’s mother, who emigrated from Barbados and raised six children in Brooklyn.
Is Hilton Als still alive?
Yes. He was born in Brooklyn in 1960, writes for The New Yorker and teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
Does Hilton Als have a new book coming?
Yes. His publisher Allen Lane has announced I Don’t Remember, a book of memoir, reportage and criticism about queer life in America during the AIDS crisis. It is not yet published, so it is not counted on this page.
Footnotes
- Hilton Als — Wikipedia
- Hilton Als, The Art of the Essay No. 3 — The Paris Review, 2018
- Hilton and Love — The New York Review of Books, 2014
- My Pinup — Kirkus Reviews
- Joan Didion: What She Means — Hammer Museum on e-flux
- Alice Neel: Uptown — David Zwirner Books
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I see fiction not as the construction of an alternate world but as what your imagination gives you from the real world.”
— Hilton Als, interview in The Paris Review, “The Art of the Essay No. 3” (2018)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations