Peter L’Official (he/him) is a writer, arts critic, and teacher of literature and American studies from The Bronx, NY. He is an associate professor in literature and director of the American and Indigenous Studies Program at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he teaches courses in African American literature and culture, 20th- and 21st-century American literature, and on how the visual arts intersect with literature, place, and architecture. He is also the project coordinator for “Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck,” a grant supported by the Mellon Foundation “Humanities for All Times” initiative. 

L'Official is the author of Urban Legends: the South Bronx in Representation and Ruin, published by Harvard University Press in 2020. His writing has appeared in Artforum, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Yorker.com, The Paris Review Daily, The Village Voice, and other publications, and he is on the editorial board of The European Review of Books. He has written catalog essays for exhibitions by artists such as Carl Craig and Becky Suss, and his next book project will explore the intersections of literature, architecture, and Blackness in America. L'Official has a B.A. in English from Williams College and an M.A. in Journalism from New York University’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program. He received his Ph.D. in American studies from Harvard University, and was formerly a fellow at the Charles Warren Center for American History at Harvard University in 2014-15.