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Posts From Author: House of SpeakEasy

Writers and Storytelling: Michelle Nijhuis

Michelle Nijhuis is a project editor at The Atlantic, a contributing editor at High Country News, and an award-winning reporter whose work has been published in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. She is co-editor of The Science Writers’ Handbook and lives in White Salmon, Washington. Her new book Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction is out now. On April 20th, Michelle will join Annabelle Gurwitch and Sanjena Sathian in our next edition of “Seriously Entertaining” where they will each tell stories tied to the theme “Only Home We’ve Ever Known.” Register here for the show! What are you reading right now for solace or escape or entertainment? A lot of people enjoy true crime, but I much prefer fake crime, where nobody gets hurt and the trail leads, however circuitously, toward justice. I enjoy fake espionage, too. (RIP, John le Carré.) If you could live inside a fictional world, which one would you choose? Send me to Victorian London to tag along with Sherlock Holmes, or to Oxford to meet up with Harriet Vane. Better yet, make me their reference librarian; I’l scour the archives while they do the legwork. Are there […]

Writers and Storytelling: Sanjena Sathian

A Paul and Daisy Soros fellow, Sanjena Sathian is a 2019 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has worked as a reporter in Mumbai and San Francisco, with nonfiction bylines for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Food & Wine, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more. And her award-winning short fiction has been published in Boulevard, Joyland, Salt Hill, and The Master’s Review. Her debut novel Gold Diggers is out now. On April 20th, Sanjena will join Annabelle Gurwitch and Michelle Nijhuis in our next edition of “Seriously Entertaining” where they will each tell stories tied to the theme “Only Home We’ve Ever Known.” Register here for the show! What are you reading right now for solace or escape or entertainment? At the moment, I’m reading The Four Books by Yan Lianke. I’m not sure it’s solace, escape, OR entertainment, but it’s a completely brilliant, Kafkaesque satire about China’s Great Leap Forward. If you could live inside a fictional world, which one would you choose? It would be fun to be college friends with Selin from Elif Batuman’s The Idiot or to have drinks and kvetch with any of Lorrie Moore’s female characters. Are […]

Writers and Storytelling: Adam Begley

Adam Begley is the author of Houdini: The Elusive American (2020); The Great Nadar, The Man Behind the Camera (2017); and Updike (2014). For many years the books editor of The New York Observer, he has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, London Review of Books, TLS, and Spectator. He lives with his wife in Cambridgeshire, England. How has the current state of things impacted your writing life? Writers practice a form of quarantine whether it’s required or not. The difference right now is that most of the world has joined us. What are the ways you’ve been connecting to your community? Like most people, I’ve spent more time on video calls and messaging platforms. How do you stay focused? With great difficulty. It’s one thing to retreat to your writing desk when all around you everyday life is busy and noisy and relentless – you try to shut it out. These days, in the countryside where I live, there’s very little to shut out. On the other side of my front door the quiet and the empty calm […]

Seriously Questioning…Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and photographer. She received the MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. A Cave Canem and Kimbilio Fellow, she is the recipient of fellowships including Yaddo, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Cave Canem Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, The Millay Colony, and others. In 2011, Griffiths appeared in the first ever poetry issue in Oprah’s O Magazine. Griffiths is the author of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books 2010) and The Requited Distance (The Sheep Meadow Press 2011). Griffiths’ third collection of poetry, Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose 2011), was selected for the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her most recent full-length poetry collection is Lighting the Shadow (Four Way Books 2015), which was a finalist for the 2015 Balcones Poetry Prize and the 2016 Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Poetry. On November 1, she will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, Fear Itself alongside David Kilcullen, Julie Scelfo, and Lev Grossman (tickets). We spoke to Rachel Eliza ahead of the show… Name: Rachel Eliza Griffiths What is your favorite line from your current work? “We can’t deserve more.” What is your favorite first line of a […]

Seriously Questioning…David Kilcullen

David Kilcullen is the Chairman of Caerus Associates. Before founding Caerus, he was Special Advisor to the Secretary of State from 2007-2009 and Senior Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq in 2007. He is the author of bestselling books The Accidental Guerrilla, Counterinsurgency and Out of the Mountains. His most recent book is The Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism. On November 1, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, Fear Itself alongside Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Julie Scelfo, and Lev Grossman (tickets). We spoke to David ahead of the show… Name: David Kilcullen What is your favorite first line of a novel? “He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees.” –For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway, 1941 What advice would you give to aspiring writers? Write what you know, what you see first hand, and what people tell you, directly, in their own words. What writer, past or present, do you wish you could eat dinner with? William Gibson What are you reading right now? I always have a lot of books on the go at once, and always a mix […]

Seriously Questioning…Loudon Wainwright III

Loudon Wainwright III is a singer-songwriter and actor. In 1968, he began to write songs, and in 1969 recorded his first album. Wainwright has recorded twenty-seven albums, including his 2010 Grammy Award–winning High, Wide, & Handsome. His songs have been covered by Johnny Cash, Mose Allison, Rufus Wainwright, Bonnie Raitt, and Earl Scruggs, among others. As an actor he has appeared on TV (M*A*S*H, Ally McBeal, Undeclared), in movies (Big Fish, The Aviator, Knocked Up), on Broadway (Pump Boys and Dinettes) and Off Broadway (Hot Lunch Apostles, Surviving Twin). On September 26th, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, One for the Road alongside Ann Brashares, Adam Begley, and Erica Wagner (tickets). We spoke to Loudon ahead of the show… Name: Loudon Wainwright III Title of most recent work: Liner Notes- About Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & and A Few Of My Other Favorite Things (Read a review from the NY Times) What advice would you give to aspiring writers? Get up every morning and do it (write) for 2 hours What writer past or present do you wish you could eat dinner with? John Updike & Anton Chekhov What writer do you wish you could share with the world The songwriter Tom Lehrer What […]

Seriously Questioning…Erica Wagner

Erica Wagner was the literary editor of The London Times for seventeen years and is now a contributing writer for The New Statesman, and consulting literary editor for Harper’s Bazaar. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Economist, The Financial Times, and The New York Times, among others. She is the author of Ariel’s Gift, Seizure, and the short story collection Gravity; she is the editor of First Light: A Celebration of Alan Garner. In 2014 she became the recipient of the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award, and she is a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. She lives in London with her husband and son. On September 26th, she will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, One for the Road alongside Ann Brashares, Adam Begley, and Loudon Wainwright III (tickets). We spoke to Erica ahead of the show… Name: Erica Wagner Title of most recent work: Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, the Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge (Read reviews from The Economist and the NY Times) What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? … sitting on my parents’ bed with my favourite book, “The Diamond D and the Dreadful Dragon,”, a Sesame Street book. They were still asleep. I […]

Seriously Questioning…Ada Calhoun

Ada Calhoun is the author of two nonfiction books recently published by W.W. Norton & Co.: St. Marks Is Dead was named a New York Times Editors’ Pick, Amazon Book of the Month, and one of the best books of the year by Kirkus, The Boston Globe, Orlando Weekly, and The Village Voice, which called it 2015’s “Best Nonfiction Book About New York.” Her most recent work, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, is a book of essays about marriage and was released this May. On June 14, she will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, By the Light of the Moon alongside Brad Gooch, Harry Evans, and Glenn Frankel (tickets). We spoke to Ada ahead of the show. Name: Ada Calhoun Age: 41 Where are you from? St. Marks Place, NYC What is your occupation? Writer Title of most recent work: Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give What are you working on now? A sleep-deprived book tour. If you had to paint a scene from your childhood to capture its essence, what would you paint? I grew up in the East Village in the ‘80s (which I wrote about in my 2015 book St. Marks Is Dead). I’d paint the sidewalk at the […]

Seriously Questioning… Glenn Frankel

Glenn Frankel is an author and journalist, based in Arlington, Virginia. Most recently, he served as the director of the School of Journalism and G.B. Dealey Regents Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He has also spent time as a visiting journalism professor at Stanford University and an Alicia Patterson Fellow. Notably, he won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting when he served as Washington Post reporter, editor, and bureau chief in London, Southern Africa, and Jerusalem. His book, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, was a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller and a Library Journal Top Ten book for 2013. His new book explores the Hollywood blacklist and the making of the classic western High Noon. On June 14, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, By the Light of the Moon alongside Brad Gooch, Harry Evans, and Ada Calhoun (tickets). We spoke to Glenn ahead of the show. Name: Glenn Frankel Age: 67 Where are you from? Born in the Bronx but raised in Rochester NY. What is your occupation? Author and Journalist Title of most recent work: High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic What are you […]