Tricia Romano w/ Erica C. Barnett & Charles Mudede

Journalist Tricia Romano celebrates the paperback release of The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture, a rollicking history of America's most iconic weekly newspaper told through the voices of its legendary writers, editors, and photographers. Romano will be joined by Erica C. Barnett, editor and publisher of PubliCola, and Charles Mudede, writer for the Stranger, filmmaker, and lecturer.

You either were there or you wanted to be. A defining New York City institution co-founded by Norman Mailer, The Village Voice was the first newspaper to cover hip-hop, the avant-garde art scene, and Off-Broadway with gravitas. It reported on the AIDS crisis with urgency and seriousness when other papers dismissed it as a gay disease. In 1979, the Voice’s Wayne Barrett uncovered Donald Trump as a corrupt con artist before anyone else was paying attention. It invented new forms of criticism and storytelling and revolutionized journalism, spawning hundreds of copycats.

With more than 200 interviews, including two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead, cultural critic Greg Tate, gossip columnist Michael Musto, and feminist writers Vivian Gornick and Susan Brownmiller, former Voice writer Tricia Romano pays homage to the paper that saved NYC landmarks from destruction and exposed corrupt landlords and judges. With interviews featuring post-punk band, Blondie, sportscaster Bob Costas, and drummer Max Weinberg, of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, in this definitive oral history, Romano tells the story of journalism, New York City and American culture—and the most famous alt-weekly of all time.

FINALIST FOR 2024 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST FOR 2025 GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE LISTED IN BEST BOOKS OF 2024 BY NEW YORK MAGAZINE (VULTURE), THE NEW YORKER, LITHUB, AND CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY

Tricia Romano began her career at the Village Voice, where her column, Fly Life, covered the underbelly of New York nightlife. A fellow at MacDowell, Ucross, and Millay artist residencies, her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Dame, and Men’s Journal. A longtime New Yorker, she lives in Seattle, Washington.

Erica C. Barnett is the editor and publisher of PubliCola, an independent local news site in Seattle, and the author of Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery. Prior to co-founding PubliCola with her longtime colleague Josh Feit in 2009, Erica was a reporter and editor for the Stranger, Seattle Weekly, and the Austin Chronicle. She considers PubliCola a modern alt-weekly newsroom.

Charles Tonderai Mudede is a Zimbabwean-born cultural critic, filmmaker, lecturer, and writer. He is Senior Staff writer for The Stranger, a lecturer at Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University, and has collaborated with the director Robinson Devor on three films, two of which, Police Beat and Zoo, premiered at Sundance, and one of which, Zoo, screened at Cannes, and the most recent of which, Suburban Fury, premiered at New York Film Festival. (Police Beat is now part of MOMA’s permanent collection.) Mudede, who directed the feature film Thin Skin (2023), has also written for the New York Times, Cinema Scope, e-Flux, LA Weekly, C Theory, Tank Magazine, and The Village Voice.

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