About Mark Dery

C. Taylor Crothers Mark Dery

Mark Dery is a cultural critic, essayist, and the author of four books: Escape Velocity, a critique of the libertarian-bro ideology that dominated the Digital Revolution of the ‘90s; two studies of American mythologies (and pathologies) The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink and the essay collection I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, and, most recently, the biography Born To Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey.

He has taught journalism at NYU and “dark aesthetics” at the Yale School of Art; been a Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow at UC Irvine, a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, and a Poynter Journalism Fellow at Yale. His byline has appeared in a broad range of publications, including New York, The New York Times MagazineRolling StoneElle, Bookforum, Boing Boing, Cabinet, The Daily Beast, Hyperallergic, Salon, WiredThe Washington Post, and The LA Review of Books

He popularized the concept of “culture jamming” and, in his 1993 essay, “Black to the Future,” coined the term “Afrofuturism.”

AGENT: Andrew Stuart, The Andrew Stuart Agency.

AUTHOR PHOTO FOR PROMOTIONAL USE: HERE.

Selected Interviews


June 18, 2013 interview about my Kindle single, All the Young Dudes: Why Glam Rock Matters, for New Hampshire Public Radio’s “Word of Mouth” show.

June 21, 2012 interview with The Los Angeles Review of Books, “Hathologies: An Interview with Mark Dery,” by Michael Goetzman, on the occasion of my essay collection, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams.

April 25, 2012 interview on The Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC, New York’s public-radio station. “Mark Dery, cultural critic and author of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, critiques contemporary American pop culture, from Lady Gaga to the apocalypse.”

April 24, 2012 interview with Matthew Newton for The Verge magazine, “Archaeologist of the Future Present: Mark Dery’s Visions of American Dread, American Dreams.”

April 8, 2012 interview with R.U. Sirius for Acceler8tor magazine, “Bad Thoughts & The Politics Of The Polysyllabic: An Interview With Mark Dery.”

March 15, 2009 press conference for moderated panel, lecture (“Myths of the Next Five Minutes: Science Fiction After the Obsolescence of the Future”) at “Parallel Worlds: Prospective and Perspective of Science Fiction,” part of the Festival de México en el Centro Histórico, with science-fiction authors Bruce Sterling, Chris Nakashima-Brown, Christopher Priest, M. John Harrison, and Linda Nagata, at the Centro Cultural Tlatelolco Conference Hall, Mexico City. Video here.

Promotional interview, filmed in Brazil, for my 2007 appearance at the Brazilian forum, Fronteiras do Pensamento (“Frontiers of Contemporary Thought”), at the Federal University in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Other speakers in the series included Bernard-Henri Lévy, Christopher Hitchens, Camille Paglia, and Michel Houellebecq. Here’s another excerpt. And another.

“Loving the Alien,” a short, drily funny 2005 thumbnail by San Diego CityBeat editor Kelly Davis about my misspent youth in the suburban wastelands of one of San Diego’s southernmost suburbs, Chula Vista.