Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. From 1992 to 1996 he wrote for the New York Times. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, was published in 2007 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, becoming a bestseller; it won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Guardian First Book Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer and the Samuel Johnson prizes, and appeared on the New York Times's list of the ten best books of 2007. Ross has received a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center, fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and the Banff Centre, three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, and a fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation. In 2008 he served as a McGraw Professor in Writing at Princeton University. A native of Washington, DC, he now lives in Manhattan. In 2005 he married the actor and filmmaker Jonathan Lisecki.
