Wilborn Hampton is a theater critic for The New York Times. Throughout a journalistic career that began in as a cub reporter covering the assassination of President Kennedy, and later carried him to , , and the as a foreign correspondent, his abiding passion for the theater remained constant. After joining The New York Times as an editor, that lifelong love led him into a position as a theater critic and feature writer, reviewing plays and conducting interviews on a freelance basis for the paper. Over the course of the past 20 years, he has reviewed more than 500 stage productions for The Times, and although he left his editorial position on the paper in 2006, he continues to review plays and write articles on the theater on a regular basis.
Hampton has published several Young Adult nonfiction books: Kennedy Assassinated: The World Mourns, Meltdown: A Race Against Nuclear Disaster at Three Mile Island and September 11, 2001: Attack on , War in the : A Reporter's Story (those 4 were published by Candlewick Press), and a biography of Elvis Presley published by Viking Childrens Books as part of their "Close Up" series.