David Kipen (born August 14, 1963) is an author, critic, broadcaster, arts administrator, full-time UCLA writing faculty member and nonprofit bilingual lending librarian.
After starting out editing sections for the Los Angeles city magazine Buzz and Variety, Kipen served from 1998 to 2005 as book critic and editor for the San Francisco Chronicle.
His op-ed "An open letter to Uniontown from Los Angeles" ran as part of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Pulitzer-winning coverage of the 2018 synagogue shooting at the Tree of Life Congregation.
In addition, he continues to talk frequently about books and culture on three Southern California public-radio stations, including his recurring segment Reading By Moonlight on KPCC-FM.
In 2008, NEA chairman Dana Gioia tasked Kipen with fielding a delegation of over fifty Southern California writers and filmmakers to the 2009 Feria Internacional Del Libro (FIL) in Guadalajara, Mexico, the world's second largest book fair.
Under his artistic direction, Libros Schmibros has produced several events and installations throughout Los Angeles, including a ten-week, held-over engagement at the Hammer Museum.
There and elsewhere, he has engaged a wide range of creative people in interviews—public, published and broadcast—including Steve Martin, David Foster Wallace, John Cleese, Hal Holbrook, Salman Rushdie, Bruce Dern, Jonathan Franzen, Tommy Lee Jones, Forest Whitaker, Christopher Hitchens, Manohla Dargis, and Ray Bradbury.
Kipen is probably best known for his bestselling 2018 book Dear Los Angeles: The City In Diaries And Letters, 1542–2018 (Modern Library), which Dwight Garner, in his New York Times review, called "ebullient and often moving."