Tag: interviews

Sherry Turkle studies how we relate to our devices, and thinks it’s high time we start talking to each other again.

After so many years, are you still sure about your decision to remain in the shadows? “Remain in the shadows” is not an expression I like. It savors of plots, assassins. Let’s say that, fifteen years ago, I chose to publish books without having to feel obliged to make a career of being a writer. […]

Game designer Jane McGonigal argues that playing games can help us develop skills for life.

Social scientist Bella DePaulo’s research reveals a broader array of lifestyles—from our relationships to our living spaces—than many of us could dream up.

Rachel Hills on her new book, ‘The Sex Myth,’ which explores our cultural obsession with sex and our disdain for prudishness, vanilla tastes, and virginity.

INTERVIEWER Isn’t there an enormous temptation as a fiction writer to take scenes out of history, since you do rely on that so much, and fiddle with them just a little bit? DOCTOROW Well, it’s nothing new, you know. I myself like the way Shakespeare fiddles with history; and Tolstoy. In this country we tend […]

INTERVIEWER Do you keep to a schedule? ROBINSON I really am incapable of discipline. I write when something makes a strong claim on me. When I don’t feel like writing, I absolutely don’t feel like writing. I tried that work ethic thing a couple of times—I can’t say I exhausted its possibilities—but if there’s not […]

If you’ve been too scared to read this week’s New Yorker story on the apocalyptic earthquake that’s threatening to destroy the Pacific Northwest, here’s a lighter take from Dan Savage, who had a short conversation with Seattle author Sandi Doughton about her 2014 book Full-Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest and […]

Author Etgar Keret’s new memoir, The Seven Good Years, chronicles the time between the birth of his son and the death of his father. Keret’s parents were both Holocaust survivors, and in an interview with Fresh Air, Keret said that experience shaped his father’s stories: My father was very charismatic and a very good storyteller […]

Vice: Is there anything, just a taste, that you’d be able to share? Mobeen Azhar: Yeah—OK, I want to know how to put this diplomatically—let me put it like this: One big theme which comes across no matter whom you speak to, in terms of people who have dealt with Prince—everyone respects him hugely, but […]

Anybody who shifts gears when he writes for children is likely to wind up stripping his gears. But I don’t want to evade your question. There is a difference between writing for children and for adults. I am lucky, though, as I seldom seem to have my audience in mind when I am at work. […]

An Interview with “America’s Test Kitchen” founder Christopher Kimball on how cooking is like woodworking, the business model behind “Cooks Illustrated,” and the awesome powers of baking soda and gelatin.

Jillian Lauren on the challenges of holding nothing back as a writer—about her time in a harem, her life as a sex worker, and the fallout from her family’s response to her memoirs.

An interview with Kay Cannon, Pitch Perfect screenwriter, on how her a cappella comedy might be changing the definition of cool.

An interview with Vivian Gornick about the problem with writing programs, the memoir’s potential for dishonesty, and finding her way as a writer.

“Here, I see many barriers, many conflicts—between class, between race, between cultures, between ideologies, between jobs.”

An interview with Caroll Spinney, who, at 81, has worked at “Sesame Street” as the puppeteer behind Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for 45 years.

“It didn’t occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret.” –Author Louise Erdrich, in the Paris Review. Read the interview

“Memoir is a total minefield, as you know. It’s best if you write the book and leave the country.”

An interview with Kate Bolick about the single women in history who helped her understand how she could live on her own terms.

Lizzie Skurnick on her new book of neologisms and why she’s republishing beloved young adult books from her youth.

“I have consciously tried to refocus my attention away from being a film critic and toward being a film historian.”

TERRY GROSS: So were you writing the song on assignment? Were you writing it for The Righteous Brothers? BARRY MANN: Yes. CYNTHIA WEIL: When we wrote the song, they weren’t that crazy about it (laughter). GROSS: Really? MANN: Well, when I sang it – I loved The Everly Brothers at the time, and I sounded […]

An interview with Mary Pilon about her new book, ‘The Monopolists,’ which uncovers the real story about how Monopoly became the game it is today.

“A really good idea might come to you at night and seem really wrong in the morning. So you’re always testing things.”

“I feel like PostSecret is almost like an anti-Facebook. It’s the true story that you would normally never share in a public arena.”

“I want to introduce white America to people who they might never have met, and I want them to fall in love too.”

Eva Holland is a journalist based in the Yukon who has written for publications including Pacific Standard and SB Nation. Her latest Longreads Original, “‘It’s Yours’,” explores the life (and maybe death) of an internet commenter community, “the Horde,” that Ta-Nehisi Coates helped foster at The Atlantic. I spoke with her via email about her […]

She published a short story in The New Yorker in 1992, then seemed to all but disappear. How author Katherine Heiny took her sweet time on the path toward publishing her new story collection.

I was still in Detroit, and I got a call from Berry Gordy — he was out in California — and he said, “We signed these kids. We finished the album and listened to all the mixes, and I don’t like any of the mixes. I’ll send you the multitracks, and I want you to […]