Reasons of State

Stanley Lawrence Crouch was an author, poet, music and cultural critic, essayist and columnist. He was born on December 14, 1945 in Los Angeles, California. After graduating from high school in 1963, he attended several junior colleges and became active in the civil rights movement. He became poet-in-residence at Pitzer College in in 1968. In 1975, he taught theater and literature at Pomona College.

He moved to New York City in 1975 and worked as a musician and conducted bookings for an avant-garde jazz series at clubs. In 1980, he was hired as a staff writer for the Village Voice. In 1988, he was fired after a fistfight with a fellow writer. He then worked as a syndicated columnist based at the New York Daily News.

His anthologies included Noted of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989; The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race: The Long and the Short of It, 1990-1994; Always in Pursuit: Fresh American Perspectives, 1995-1997; and Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz. His fiction included, Don't the Moon Look Lonesome: A Novel in Blues and Swing. He wrote a biography, The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker.

In 2016, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literary Prize.

Stanley Crouch died on September 16, 2020 in New York City at the age of 74.

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