Nik Cohn with Ben Ratliff on ‘Corner Boy’ (Chatham, NY)
October 23, 5:30 PM ET • Chatham, NY: The Chatham Bookstore | 27 Main Street · Address Line 2 Chatham, NY, 12037
Join ZE Books at The Chatham Bookstore for a Hudson Valley evening with Nik Cohn and Corner Boy: Loiterings New and Old, the definitive collection of his music writing, memoir, and reportage. Cohn will be joined in conversation by the book’s editor, the critic Ben Ratliff.
Before rock criticism had rules, Nik Cohn was already breaking them. Corner Boy gathers Cohn’s nonfiction from the 1960s to the present into a single, riotous self-portrait, moving from Derry to London, New York, and New Orleans, and writing about pop stars and boxers, club kids and hustlers, painters, prophets, disco dancers, drag queens, lowlifes, nobodies, and the half-mythic figures who live at the edge of the action.
The book draws from across Cohn’s career, including Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, his ground-breaking 1968 history of pop music; The Heart of the World, a soul-biography of Broadway; and Triksta, the saga of his misadventures in the New Orleans rap scene. Complete with full-color images drawn from Muriel, his ever-evolving sixty-year photo collage, Corner Boy is the definitive record of a life spent bearing witness.
About the Author
Nik Cohn grew up in Derry, Northern Ireland; covered “Swinging London” in the 1960s; was a contributing editor at New York magazine in the ’70s, focusing on street cultures and pop life; lived and wrote in New Orleans, Paris, Shelter Island and, most recently, the Hudson Valley.
About the Editor
Ben Ratliff is the author of books including Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening and Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. A former music critic for The New York Times, he lives in New York City and teaches at New York University.
About the Venue
Tucked under an orange awning on Main Street, The Chatham Bookstore has served Chatham and the surrounding Hudson Valley for more than forty years. Alongside contemporary and classic books for readers of all ages, the store keeps a cozy children’s section and a well-chosen stock of art supplies, games, and puzzles, and it hosts author events and book clubs through the year, with Friday and Saturday evenings given over to readings for locals and weekenders alike. chathambookstore.indielite.org
“The best writer about pop music . . . an inspiration.”
—Jarvis Cocker, BBC Radio 6 Music
"[A] longtime freelance scene-maker, [Cohn] practices a form of journalism that might be called loitering with intent . . . [He] was in the exact demographic place to feel the detonation of Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who across a formerly dull, gray landscape. He was a pioneering rock critic . . . His music writing was ardent, fond and knowing, and it had bite."
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review
The definitive, lavishly illustrated collection of music writing, memoir, and reportage from the redoubtable Nik Cohn.
Release: Oct 6, 2026
Hardcover ISBN: 9798988670148 • 400 pages
UK release: Nov 19, 2026 • UK Price: £25