Chris Hayes to Host MSNBC's 8 pm Hour Beg. 4/1

Chris Hayes will host MSNBC's 8 p.m. ET hour starting Monday, April 1. The announcement was made today by Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC.

"Chris has done an amazing job creating a franchise on weekend morning," said Griffin. "He's an extraordinary talent and has made a strong connection with our audience. This is an exciting time for MSNBC."

"I am thrilled to be joining Rachel and Lawrence in primetime," said Hayes. "I've absolutely loved hosting UP on the weekends and I'm looking forward to thinking through the news five nights a week."

More information regarding the new 8 p.m. program will be available in the coming days.

Since 2011, Chris Hayes has hosted the weekend morning program "Up w/Chris Hayes" on MSNBC. He has also contributed to all major political events throughout the 2012 Presidential election and regularly served as guest host for "The Rachel Maddow Show" and "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell". He continues to serve as editor-at-large for The Nation, a role he has held since 2007.

Hayes' first book, "Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy," which is about the crisis of authority in American life, was published in June 2012. He has written on a wide variety of political and social issues and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Nation, The American Prospect, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, The Guardian, and The Chicago Reader. He is a former Fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation and was a Schumann Center Writing Fellow at In These Times.

He is a graduate oF Brown University with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy. Follow Chris on twitter @chrislhayes.