Susan Orlean is my favorite non-fiction writer

Like so many other generations of secular Jews, I've been a fan of The New Yorker for as long as I can remember. Happy 100th bday btw!

And my favorite writer from all of my decades of reading the magazine is Susan Orlean. She has a line in her new memoir Joy Ride that I think explains why I connect with her storytelling style:

"Writers fall into two categories: There are those who have something they want to say to the world, and there are those who believe the world has something to tell them. I’m wholly of the second sort."

I found Joy Ride to be truly inspiring in terms of how Susan approaches and harnesses the creative spark. I've always felt in sync with the way she views the world, as well as her curiousity about the lives of other people (and animals!) Many passages in Joy Ride felt just as applicable to my feelings about making documentaries, especially this one:

"The single essential element in good writing is confidence. You need swagger to be a writer at all, to be convinced that readers should listen to you. You must believe passionately that you have something to say. Someone else might have the same observations, but in choosing to be a writer, you choose to broadcast your observations and reckon that they are of value. It’s a state of mind, a matter of willing yourself to trust yourself."

There were so many times during the 10 year (!) odyssey of finishing my feature documentary, Brother Orange (now available on AppleTV, Amazon, Kanopy, tubi, Air France, Air Canada, KLM, Emirates) that I struggled with the question of whether anyone else would believe in this story the way I did. The fact that it's now available in all of these places feels really validating, and I especially love the idea that people get to experience it while hopefully traveling long distances to see their dear friends.

Speaking of unlikely friendship origin stories, I became friends with Susan first on Twitter and then in real life back around 2011. The internet still felt like a place for whimsy and discovery to me back then, and much less so now, which is part of the reason I wanted to start a personal blog in 2025.

After meeting Susan at a book event for Rin Tin Tin, we struck up a friendship and ended up pitching a documentary series together called "140 Characters" in which she would meet some of her twitter followers in real life. It didn't end up selling, but it was a great experience getting to collaborate with my favorite writer. Who I met on Twitter! I was friends with Twitter before Twitter went crazy. Here was our short pitch video that we sent out at the time, I still think it's super charming and would have been a really fun show:

I haven't seen Susan since pre-pandemic, so I was thrilled to attend her book event last night at the Central Library in DTLA. And the event was extra special because it was also the site of one of her other book topics, The Library Book. Almost an echo of the night before, getting to watch Rebel Without A Cause at the Observatory.

Susan in conversation with Madeline Brand as part of the Library Foundation's ALOUD series.

a line out the (gorgeous) door to get signed books after the event

I came away from the event inspired to keep creating, and to stay curious about strangers and their stories. Susan talked about getting a New Yorker story from talking to a backpacking stranger seated next to her on a plane. Talking to a seatmate on a plane might be her hardest piece of advice to take, especially since I'm in a whirlwind romance with my new Sony headphones, but if Susan says it, I'll take it to heart. Following her hasn't steered me wrong yet.

The Library Book: The Cake