Jonathan Hillel Kay (born 1968) is a Canadian journalist. He is a Quillette editor, writer and podcast host; a TEDX speaker, podcast guest, an op-ed writer at The National Post (Canada); and a member of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (Canada) board of advisors. His work has appeared in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Le Point, Skeptic, Foreign Policy, Canadian Lawyer, Gotham, Critic, and Canadian Jewish News. He was the editor-in-chief of The Walrus (2014–2017) and a regular contributor to Commentary and the New York Post. Kay describes himself as an avid tennis and board game enthusiast, and sometimes has incorporated his passion for both pursuits into his journalism.

His books include The Volunteer (2007) – a co-authored biography of Mossad officer Michael Ross;  Among the Truthers (2011) reflecting his interest in the psychology of conspiracy theorists; Legacy: How French Canadians Shaped North America (2016);  Your Move: What Boardgames Teach Us About Life (2019); Panics and Persecutions (2020); and Magic in the Dark: One Family’s Century of Adventures in the Movie Business (2022).

Jonathan Kay was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, to an anglophone Jewish family. His mother is the socially conservative newspaper columnist Barbara Kay. He attended Selwyn House School, and Marianopolis College before obtaining a BEng and an MEng in metallurgical engineering from McGill University and a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School. He is a member of the New York bar. After practicing as a tax lawyer in New York City, Kay moved to Toronto, where, in 1998, he became a founding member of the National Post editorial board and subsequently the Comment editor as well as a columnist. He left the newspaper’s staff in 2014 but continues appearing in its pages as a freelance columnist. His freelance articles have also been published in a variety of US publications including Newsweek, The New Yorker, Salon.com, The New Republic, Harper’s Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Weekly Standard, the Literary Review of Canada, The National Interest and The New York Times.

Kay was a freelance editorial assistant on Liberal Party of Canada leader Justin Trudeau’s memoir Common Ground (2015) published by HarperCollins. His participation in the project was criticized by conservatives in social media as well as by Sun News Network personality Ezra Levant, on whose 2009 book, Shakedown, Kay also worked as an editorial assistant.

Since May 2018, Kay hosted his Wrongspeak podcast, along with Debra W. Soh until she quit at the end of first series of episodes (2018).  Wrongspeak has been announced as “on hiatus” ever since December 30, 2019 when the last podcast featured Jonathan Kay’s mother, Barbara Kay. He is now a regular host on the Quillette Podcast. 

Awards and recognition
In 2001, he was awarded the National Newspaper Award for Critical Writing. In 2003, he was awarded the National Newspaper Award for Editorial Writing. In 2015, Jonathan was awarded Engineers Canada’s award for Journalism Excellence in Engineering, He is currently a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

You can follow/DM him on Twitter at @jonkay; and on Substack, where he writes about culture-war issues at Deeply Problematic, and on board games at Let’s Get Board.