Hilton Als was born in New York City, with roots in
Barbados. Raised in
Brownsville, Brooklyn, he has four older sisters and one younger brother. He studied toward a bachelor's in art history from
Columbia University. His 1996 book
The Women focuses on his mother (who raised him in Brooklyn),
Dorothy Dean, and
Owen Dodson, who was a mentor and lover of Als. In the book, Als explores his identification of the confluence of his ethnicity, gender and sexuality, moving from identifying as a "Negress" and then an "Auntie Man", a
Barbadian term for homosexuals. In 2004 he won the
Berlin Prize of the
American Academy in Berlin, which provided him half a year of free working and studying in
Berlin. In addition to Columbia, he has taught at
Smith College,
Wellesley College,
Wesleyan University, and
Yale University, and his work has also appeared in
The Nation,
The Believer, and the
New York Review of Books. In 2017, he was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Criticism: "For bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context, particularly the shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race."
The Guardian wrote about him a year later: "Since winning his Pulitzer prize for criticism, Hilton Als has risen more visibly to the role of public intellectual, one that he plays particularly well." As an art curator, Als has been responsible for exhibitions including the group show
Forces in Nature (featuring work by such artists as
Njideka Akunyili Crosby,
Peter Doig,
Chris Ofili,
Celia Paul,
Tal R,
Sarah Sze,
Kara Walker, and
Francesca Woodman) in 2015, and an exhibition of work from the
Manhattan years of portraitist
Alice Neel, entitled
Alice Neel, Uptown, at
David Zwirner Gallery in New York City and
Victoria Miro Gallery in London (May 18 – July 29, 2017). In June 2020, Als was named an inaugural Presidential Visiting Scholar at
Princeton University for the 2020–2021 academic year. In 2024, Als guest curated
This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance, at the
National Portrait Gallery; the exhibit included works of by
Beauford Delaney,
Bernard Gotfryd, and
Faith Ringgold among others. ==Awards and honors==