J. Kelly Nestruck

James Kelleher Nestruck (/ˈnɛsˌtrʌk/ NESS-truk; styled as J. Kelly Nestruck) is a Canadian journalist and arts critic. After a longtime stint as the chief theatre critic for The Globe and Mail, he shifted in October 2024 to become a television critic for the paper following the retirement of John Doyle.^[1]

J. Kelly Nestruck
Born	James Kelly Nestruck Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Occupation(s)	Journalist, arts critic

Life and career

Nestruck was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He was raised in Montreal. He is bilingual.

Nestruck began writing for the McGill Daily, one of the student-run newspapers at McGill University in Montreal, while studying drama at the school's English department. He began an internship at the National Post as a reporter in 2003. He moved to feature writing shortly after.^[2]

In 2006, Nestruck became a subeditor and writer for The Guardian in London, England.

He returned to Toronto in 2008 to take the role of theatre critic for The Globe and Mail. He is a four-time winner of the Nathan Cohen Award for Excellence in Critical Writing,^[3][4][5][6] and in 2013, he was a runner-up for a National Newspaper Award in the Arts and Entertainment category.^[7]

He completed a masters at the Centre for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies at University of Toronto in 2013.

In 2016, Nestruck married playwright and screenwriter Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman. He cited the need to be more present at home for their children, thus making it difficult for him to attend evening theatrical shows, as a reason for his shift to television criticism in 2024.^[1]