Contributor to The New Yorker since 1994. Als is a former staff writer for the Village Voice and editor at Vibe magazine. His work has appeared in The Nation and The New York Times. He has written film scripts for Swoon and Looking for Langston, and edited the catalogue for the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition "Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art" which ran from November, 1994, to March, 1995.