William Shaw

Who is William Shaw?

William Shaw works as a journalist and writer in the US and in the UK. One of his most noticeable works is the 1999 book Westsiders: Stories of the Boys in the Hood, which chronicles the attempts of a group of Los Angelenos to become successful hip hop artists.

He worked on Details magazine and remains a contributing editor there. For Details he spent a month in the Utah desert living with Stone Age survivalists, went undercover at cross burnings with the neo-Nazi Christian Identity Movement in Idaho, shot AK-47s with Zionist fundamentalists in upper New York State and spent a week staying at the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center in Hollywood. He started his journalistic career as the Assistant Editor of the punk/goth magazine ZigZag. Since then his work has appeared in publications around the world, including The Times, The Independent, The Sunday Telegraph, The Observer, The Mail on Sunday, South China Morning Post, FHM, Tatler, US Vogue, George, The Face, GQ, Esquire and Cosmopolitan. His first book, Travellers, was an oral history of Britain's New Age travellers.