A frequent contributor to The New Yorker magazine’s Talk of the Town section, Als joined the magazine’s staff in 1996 and became one of its theater critics in 2002. In 1997 Als won first place in two categories in the New York Association of Black Journalists Awards: “Magazine Critique/Review” and “Magazine Arts and Entertainment.” He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2000 for creative writing.

Als also is a former staff writer for The Village Voice and former editor-at-large at Vibe magazine, and his work has appeared in The Nation. He has written film scripts for “Swoon” and “Looking for Langston” and edited the catalog for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s exhibition titled “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art,” which ran from November 1994 to March 1995. His first book, The Women (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996), was a meditation on gender and race and their roles in the forging of personal identity. He also is co-writer (with artist Darryl Turner) of “Don’t Explain,” a screenplay being produced by Christine Vachon at Killer Films, producers of films “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”