Chris Ruen is an author from Brooklyn whose essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Slate and The New York Press. He is a former Contributing Editor for the 
internationally-distributed Cool ‘Eh Magazine and has covered music culture for Tiny Mix Tapes, a Minneapolis-based online music magazine. While studying at the University of Minnesota, he founded The Wake, a student magazine that went on to earn national recognition in 2006 as “Best Campus Publication” by the Independent Press Association. Ruen’s authorial debut, Freeloading: How Our Insatiable Appetite For Free Content Is Starving Creativity, will be released later this year by OR Books in the United States and Scribe Publications in Australia. Aided by the participation of musicians and professionals from Brooklyn’s independent music scene, Freeloading, re-examines the music industry’s travails with digital piracy over the past decade as a means of exploring why it matters whether consumers pay for their creative content in the digital age. Ruen’s work is animated by his desire to better understand what it means to be an engaged individual citizen-consumer in our time, as humanity begins to wrestle with this exponentially more technological, “connected” and dynamic new century.