Biography
Jessica Hopper is a director, producer and author based in Chicago. In a career spanning more than twenty years, Hopper earned acclaim as a provocative, fearless music journalist before moving on to directing and producing documentary work.
Most recently, Hopper directed and executive produced the upcoming four-part docuseries Women Who Rock, releasing summer of 2022 on Epix and Sky. She is also executive producing a feature documentary, based on her history of Lilith Fair, with White Horse Pictures, which will be released in 2023.
She has written for GQ, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Elle, and Bookforum. A long time contributor to the Chicago Reader and she was also a columnist for the Village Voice, Chicago Tribune, and Punk Planet, as well as the music consultant for This American Life for eight years. Her first book, The Girls Guide To Rocking (Workman, 2009) was named a Notable Book for Young Readers by the American Library Association.
She is the author of The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic and the 2018 music memoir Night Moves. She was formerly the Editorial Director at MTV News, and Senior Editor at Pitchfork and Rookie. Her essays have appeared in Best Music Writing for 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010, and 2011. She is series editor of The American Music Series at the University of Texas Press. In 2019, Hopper served as host and executive producer for KCRW's popular music history podcast, Lost Notes. In 2021, she co-founded Golden Teapot, a production company specializing in music and culture documentary work, with her sister, former Rookie publisher Lauren Redding.
Hopper's forthcoming book, No God But Herself: How Women Changed Music in 1975 (2025) and a revised and expanded second edition of The First Collection (July 2021), are both due from MCD/Farrar Straus & Giroux.
