The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience How New Yorker Writer and Author of ‘The Rules Do Not Apply’ Ariel Levy Writes
The New Yorker staff writer, award-winning journalist, and author of a new memoir The Rules Do Not Apply, Ariel Levy, took a moment out of her hectic schedule to rap with me about the writing life, advice from the impeccable Gay Talese, and turning her personal story into a book.
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Start getting more from your site today!The author was a contributing editor for New York magazine for 12 years before becoming a staff writer at The New Yorker where she has written acclaimed pieces on a wide range of subjects from swimmer Diana Nyad to the hallucinogen ayahuasca.
Ariel’s work has appeared in The Washington Post, Vogue, Slate, Men’s Journal, and many others. She was the editor of The Best American Essays 2015, a collection in which she was also anthologized in 2008.
Her latest, The Rules Do Not Apply, is a book based on her heartbreaking personal story, “Thanksgiving in Mongolia.” After winning the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism, she expanded it into a memoir “… about a woman overcoming dramatic loss and finding reinvention.”
Bestselling author David Sedaris said of the book, “Every deep feeling a human is capable of will be shaken loose by this profound book.”
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In this file Ariel Levy and I discuss:
- How an award-winning journalist started out as a gossip columnist
- Why it was easy for the author to turn the lens onto her own painful past
- How to report a great story for The New Yorker
- Analog writer hacks for creating order from chaos
- How great writers are like chocolate
The Show Notes
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- The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir – Ariel Levy
- The New Yorker Contributor page – Ariel Levy
- ArielLevy.net
- A Litany Of Tragedy In ‘The Rules Do Not Apply’ – Ariel Levy on NPR
- The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale – Ariel Levy on ayahuasca
- Ariel Levy on Twitter
- Kelton Reid on Twitter
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