jacobclifton.com · About
I’m Jacob Clifton.
I write about stories.
Other people’s, for about fifteen years. My own, for the last ten. The tools and the instincts are the same either way — you’re always looking for the moment the mask slips, the thing the story is about underneath the thing it thinks it’s about.
I’m based in Austin, Texas. I’ve been doing this professionally since 2000.
2000 — 2014
Television Without Pity
For fourteen years I was a flagship staff writer at Television Without Pity — the site that taught a generation of viewers that the show you love is worth taking seriously, and the show you hate is worth taking apart. At its peak, TWoP reached a million readers a week.
I covered Battlestar Galactica, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, True Blood, Doctor Who, Ugly Betty, and about forty other shows — writing recaps that were less about what happened and more about what it cost, what it meant, and why you couldn’t look away. The recaps were long. The readers were patient. It was the best job I’ve ever had.
A lot of those readers are still here. That still surprises me in the best possible way.
2014 — present
After the site closed
After TWoP, I joined Gawker as TV Editor, then served as Deputy Editor at ScreenerTV (Tribune Media). I’ve written pop culture criticism for Reactor Magazine at Tor.com, television reviews for the Austin Chronicle, essays for BuzzFeed and Vulture, and short fiction for Clarkesworld.
The through-line in all of it is the same thing that drove the recaps: I’m interested in what stories cost the people who make them and the people who need them. That question doesn’t get less interesting. I’ve just found more forms for it.
Today I run A Rough Trade Writing School, write novels, make card decks, maintain a Patreon, and work with brands and publishers through Clifton Creative. It’s a lot, but it all comes from the same place.
If you’re looking for a map of where everything lives, Start Here has one.
The creative work
Books, criticism, and the card deck.
Novels
The Compleatly Wasted Beauty
The Urges: Book One of Halcyon
Outriding: The Open Line
Everything All of the Time
Card deck
Wild Magic Oracular Spectacular
52 cards. 52 writing lessons. At arough.trade.
The WATCHING series
Remixed television criticism volumes — the TWoP recaps expanded and reworked into full books.
WATCHING
Battlestar Galactica
WATCHING
Gossip Girl
WATCHING
Pretty Little Liars
WATCHING
True Blood
All available at Stag + Birch →
The short version
Married to Jason.
Two dogs.
Ambrose and Anaïs (Anaïs has opinions about everything, including her food; Ambrose is just happy to be here). We live in South Austin, where I’ve been long enough to have real feelings about the summers.
Still watching too much television. Still think it’s worth it.
Not sure where to go from here? Start Here has a map.