Chuck Klosterman

Charles John Klosterman, born June 5, 1972, is an American author and essayist whose work centers on American popular culture. He grew up far from the media centers he would later write about, the youngest of seven children of Florence and William Klosterman, on a farm near Wyndmere, North Dakota. Born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, he is of German and Polish descent and was raised Roman Catholic. He graduated from Wyndmere High School in 1990, then earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism with a minor in English literature from the University of North Dakota in 1994.

Klosterman’s writing life began in newspapers. After college, he worked as a journalist in Fargo, North Dakota, and later as a reporter and arts critic for the Akron Beacon Journal in Akron, Ohio. In 2002, he moved to New York City, the same year he began a run as a senior writer and columnist for Spin, where he worked until 2006. He went on to write for GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, The Guardian, and The Washington Post. He has also been a columnist for Esquire and ESPN.com, and wrote “The Ethicist” column for The New York Times Magazine.

He was first recognized for rock music writing, and in 2002 received the ASCAP Deems Taylor award for music criticism. His books soon made him a wider figure in essays about culture, taste, identity, and media. Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural Nörth Daköta, published in 2001, is a humorous memoir and history about glam metal. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, published in 2003, became a best-selling collection of original pop culture essays. Other major nonfiction books include Killing Yourself to Live, I Wear the Black Hat, But What If We’re Wrong?, The Nineties, and Football.

Klosterman has written thirteen books in all, including two novels and a collection of short stories described as “fictional nonfiction.” His fiction includes Downtown Owl, about life in the fictional town of Owl, North Dakota, and The Visible Man, about a man who uses a cloaking device to observe others. He also created the card sets HYPERtheticals and SUPERtheticals, both built around hypothetical questions. His magazine work has appeared in anthologies including Best Music Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

His range has widened across sports, film, teaching, television, and podcasts. He began contributing to ESPN’s Page 2 in 2005, was an original member and consulting editor at Grantland, and co-hosted the podcast Music Exists with Chris Ryan in 2020. In 2008, he spent the summer as the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at Leipzig University’s Institute for American Studies in Germany. He appeared in the documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits, where his extended interview with LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy forms the backbone of the film, and he also appeared as a music critic in IFC’s Documentary Now!

Klosterman’s work lasts because it treats pop culture as something worth thinking about with care, humor, and suspicion. He writes about rock bands, football, villains, technology, celebrity, perception, and the possibility that the present may look strange to the future. His best-selling But What If We’re Wrong? asks readers to imagine contemporary life as distant history; The Nineties and Football both debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. Across books and columns, he keeps returning to a simple but fertile idea: the things people casually consume can reveal how they think.