Laura Spinney is an author and science journalist. She has published two novels in English, The Doctor and The Quick. Her third book of non-fiction, Rue Centrale, came out in 2013 from Editions L’Age d’Homme (in French and in English), and her fourth, a tale of the Spanish flu called Pale Rider, came out in 2017.  She also writes on science for National Geographic, The Economist, Nature, New Scientist and The Telegraph among others. On October 16, she will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, Forget Me Not, alongside Gregory Pardlo, Itamar Moses, and Joel Rose. We spoke to Laura ahead of the show. What is your favorite first line of a novel? I love the first line of Vivant Denon’s novella “No Tomorrow” (which he wrote in his native language, French). Technically it’s two sentences, but nobody seems to mind: “I was madly in love with the Countess of…; I was twenty, and I was naive; she deceived me, I protested, she left me. I was naive, I pined for her; I was twenty, she forgave me: and as I was twenty, naive, still cuckolded but no longer deserted, I considered myself the luckiest of her lovers, the happiest of men.” What advice would you give to aspiring writers? Don’t be precious about words. Throw away many more than […]

Itamar Moses is the Tony Award-winning author of the full-length plays The Band’s Visit, Outrage, Bach At Leipzig, Celebrity Row, The Four of Us, Yellowjackets, Back Back Back, and Completeness, and various short plays and one-acts. His work has appeared Off-Broadway and elsewhere in New York, at regional theatres across the country and in Canada, and has been published by Faber & Faber, Heinemann Press, Playscripts Inc., Samuel French, Inc., and Vintage. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, MCC Playwrights Coalition, Naked Angels Mag 7, and is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. He is presently adapting Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress Of Solitude. On October 16, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, Forget Me Not, alongside Laura Spinney, Gregory Pardlo, and Joel Rose. We spoke to Itamar ahead of the show. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? My earliest memories of reading are probably reading children’s books during free time at school. And reading in bed for as long as I was allowed before having to turn off the light. I was a big reader as a kid. My earliest memories of writing are probably stories I had to write in school — which I always liked. Creative work never […]

Elliot Ackerman is the author of the novels Dark at the Crossing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Green on Blue. His writings have appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications, and his stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories. He is both a former White House Fellow and Marine, and served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. On September 18, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, The Long Way, alongside Faith Salie, Sofija Stefanovic, and Richard M. Cohen. We spoke to Elliot ahead of the show. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? My father, who I love dearly and who also has always been a workaholic, would watch my brother and me on the weekends so that my mother could work (she is a writer). Part of his regimen with us was that we’d have to read for at least an hour in our rooms. Those Saturday afternoons, forced to sit in my room and read were one of my earliest memories of reading. […]

Caroline Weber is a Professor of French at Barnard and the author of The New York Times Notable Book, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. Her essays have appeared in a wide variety of academic and mainstream publications. She has published articles on eighteenth-century authors such as Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Sade, Charrière, and La Chaussée, and on contemporary thinkers like Lacan and Lyotard. She writes regularly for The New York Times Book Review. Her new book is Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin de Siecle Paris. Caroline is speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show on May 22nd, themed No Man’s Land, alongside Kashana Cauley, Lauren Hilgers, and Meg Wolitzer. We spoke to Caroline ahead of the show… What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? Waking up as a small child to find my canopy bed on fire because I had been reading under the covers so that my parents wouldn’t know I had stayed up past my bedtime & somehow the little camping lamp I was using overheated after I drifted off to sleep. I escaped the conflagration & was duly scolded by my parents but didn’t stop reading in bed after hours; I simply switched to […]

Lauren Hilgers is a journalist whose articles have appeared in Harper’s, Wired, Businessweek, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. Her new book is Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown. Lauren is speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show on May 22nd, themed No Man’s Land, alongside Caroline Weber and Meg Wolitzer. We spoke to Lauren ahead of the show…   What is your favorite first line of a novel? The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and as delicate as silver rods. –Sinclair Lewis, Babbit. What advice would you give to aspiring writers? Be persistent. What writer past or present do you wish you could eat dinner with? Mary Anne Evans. What writer do you wish you could share with the world? I’m an Emily Hahn evangelist. She was a writer who lived in Shanghai during the 1930s, and who ended up waiting out most of World War II in Hong Kong, after having an affair with a British spy. She was irreverent, charming, and a little bit insane. What are you reading right now? Ghettoside, by Jill Leovy.