Tarpley Hitt is a writer at Gawker, where she covers culture and politics, and a contributing editor at The Drift magazine. Before that, she covered culture and entertainment for the Daily Beast, and has contributed to the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Miami Herald, and Miami New Times. At the latter, she profiled the late rapper XXXtentacion, a piece that was anthologized in The Best Damn HipHop Writing (2018), covered by the New York Times' Popcast, won the Green Lantern award for Best Feature Writing in the South, and remains Miami New Times' most read article of all time.