When Michael Lewis was twenty-seven years old he gave up a career on Wall Street to earn a tiny fraction of his future salary to become a full-time writer. His employers, his father and his Princeton pedigree deemed him insane, but for Lewis the choice was clear: he wanted, more than anything, to write.

Today, he’s a best-selling author. Film adaptations of his books Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003) and The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (2006) have starred Hollywood A-listers, his financial commentary has gone viral, and he’s penciled in on the White House calendar—to go behind the scenes with Obama on the campaign trail. All Hunter S. Thompson-esque allusions aside, Lewis is living the kind of writing life that makes heads spin even without the psychedelics. On Wednesday, February 29^th he spoke with Adam Savage at the Herbst Theatre as part of City Arts & Lectures. Read the rest of this entry »

(Evan Karp)

I made it to City Arts & Lectures for the first time this past week to see Miranda July in conversation with her longtime friend Julia Bryan-Wilson, and I’d like to share some of the things I heard. For those of you who don’t know (you probably know), Miranda is one of my favorite artists; if you don’t know why you should click here, here, here, here, and it’s not too late to go here.

“Yes, I wanted the solution to my script,” she said, “but also sort of to life in general, and it seemed better to talk with strangers than to just keep spinning in my own head and my sort of fictional world.” Read the rest of this entry »