Howard Fishman is an American culture writer, singer, guitarist, bandleader, playwright, and composer from Brooklyn, New York. Since 2016, Fishman has been a contributing writer for The New Yorker. He has also written for The Washington Post Magazine, Artforum, Vanity Fair, San Francisco Chronicle, MOJO, and No Depression. Brooklyn Magazine describes his music and discography as "steeped in country, soul, gospel, rock, blues...jazz, Gypsy swing, and American folk." His plays have been presented at The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and at Henry Street Settlement. Fishman's first book, "To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse," will be published by Dutton/Penguin Random House in May, 2023. Musical biography In a 2021 reflection, Fishman traced his introduction to Cat Stevens's music to when, as teenagers in the mid-1980s, friends and he watched the Hal Ashby movie Harold and Maude. One of Stevens's songs used in the movie—which "could be called its theme", namely, “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out”—led Fishman the "very next day [to] acquire... a cheap guitar" and begin teaching himself how to play. He continued: Stevens’s songs eventually led me to Bob Dylan; Dylan led me to early-20th-century blues, jazz and country music; and by my early 20s I was living in New Orleans, fronting my first band. WAMC's Joe Donahue describes Fishman as having begun "his musical career on the streets of New Orleans and the subways of New York before landing his first major engagement at the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in 1999." He has since headlined in major venues both in the United States and abroad, including The Steppenwolf Theatre, The Blue Note, NJPAC, The Pasadena Playhouse, Joe's Pub, The Bottom Line, and Le Petit Journal in Paris. He made his Lincoln Center debut in February 2007, when he was presented as part of this season's American Songbook series. Fishman has also been a guest on various NPR programs, making feature-length appearances on "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, "World Cafe" with David Dye, "The Leonard Lopate Show," and "Soundcheck" with John Schaefer, among others. Performing Projects The Howard Fishman Quartet Fishman's first music project was The Howard Fishman Quartet, a band that first appeared on the NYC scene in 1999, who went from performing on Brooklyn subway platforms to a nine-month residency at the Algonquin Oak Room. The original group featured Russell Farhang