Ann Hornaday

Hornaday grew up in Des Moines, Iowa.[1] She attended Smith College, majoring in government;[1] she graduated in 1982.[2]

After graduating from college, Hornaday moved to New York to become a freelance writer, contributing to Premiere, Us and Ms. magazines;[1] at the latter, she also worked as a researcher and assistant to Gloria Steinem,[3] a role she held from 1983 to 1985.[4] Hornaday began contributing to the "Arts & Leisure" section of The New York Times, eventually going on to become film critic at the Austin American-Statesman in 1995.[5] In 1997 she moved to The Baltimore Sun, then to The Washington Post in 2002, following the retirement of the Post's previous critic Rita Kempley.[1] She has also written features for Working Woman and Self magazine.[6]

In 2008, Hornaday was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism,[7] with the prize committee citing "her perceptive movie reviews and essays, reflecting solid research and an easy, engaging style."[8]

In 2017, Hornaday published Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies.[9][10][11][12] The book, a 304-page text published with Basic Books,[13] draws on a series Hornaday began writing in 2009 for the Post, aimed at explaining the various specialized crafts in filmmaking – like sound, editing, cinematography – to a general audience.[3] Hornaday approached it as a journalistic project, interviewing people working in a variety of roles in film to ask them to describe what they do as well as "what they wished audiences appreciated more about their work".[3] In a review for The New York Times, Lisa Schwarzbaum described the book as "a pleasantly calm, eminently sensible, down-the-middle primer for the movie lover — amateur, professional or Twitter-centric orator — who would like to acquire and sharpen basic viewing skills."[7]

Hornaday lives in Baltimore.[14]

• Archive at The Washington Post
• Ann Hornaday, "The 34 best political movies ever made" The Washington Post Jan. 23, 2020)