Margo Jefferson

Margo Jefferson earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and American Literature from Brandeis University in 1968 and a Master’s of Science from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1971, having won the school’s prestigious Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship along the way. Jefferson came back to the Columbia community from 1991 to 1993, during which time she taught classes in American literature, performing arts criticism, writing, and English. Most recently, she has been a Senior Fellow at Columbia’s National Arts Journalism Program (2002-2003), and she currently serves on the faculty of Columbia’s School of the Arts Graduate Writing Program. Outside the academic world, Jefferson was an associate editor of Newsweek magazine from 1973 to 1978, and also worked at Vogue and Seven Days magazines. As of the early 1990s, Jefferson began working for The New York Times, first as a critic on the culture desk and then in the position of Sunday theater critic. In 1995, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. She has also won awards from the GE/Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and from the American Library Association, and her book-length essay On Michael Jackson was published in 2006 to great critical acclaim.