Susan Orlean

My books

Lazy Little Loafers
Of all my books, Lazy Little Loafers has had the most interesting backstory. I originally wrote the text as a humor piece for the New Yorker under the title "Shiftless Little Loafers" (Shouts & Murmurs, July 22, 2006). I meant it to convey the cranky, slightly churlish tone of a probably childless narrator complaining about how babies seem to get away with murder.

The Orchid Thief
In 1994, I headed down to Florida to investigate the story of John Laroche, an eccentric plant dealer who had been arrested along with a crew of Seminoles for poaching rare orchids out of the a South Florida swamp. I never imagined that I would end up spending the next two years shadowing Laroche and exploring the odd, passionate world of orchid fanatics.

My Kind of Place
After collecting my favorite profiles for Bullfighter, I decided to gather the pieces I'd written in which "place" was the protagonist. These certainly aren't typical travel pieces -- you will find no hotel or restaurant suggestions, that's for sure -- but in each one, I felt the sense of where the story unfolded was almost as important as the story itself.

And lots more on the book page...

Greetings -- and welcome to susanorlean.com. I'm an author, a staff writer for The New Yorker, a dog owner, a gardener, a parent, a frequent lecturer/speaker, an occasional teacher, a very occasional guest editor, a once-in-a-blue-moon movie inspiration, and doodler. I've written a lot of books, which are featured here, and even more magazine articles, some of which I've posted here. There's information about that once-in-a-blue-moon movie, Adaptation; a compendium of news and links about me; and a calendar listing my upcoming readings and appearances and dentist appointments. And I'll be adding more all the time...

News, appearances, and interviews

Time for a New Look
Bad dog (food)!
Rin Tin Tinning
California here I come!

Articles I've written

Thinking in the Rain, The New Yorker, February 11 & 18, 2008

The Steve Hollinger experience can be described most simply as multimedia. For one thing, it includes olfactory surprises. My apartment was right above Steve's for several years, and on a regular basis he would call to warn me about odors that might waft their way from the second floor, where he lived, to my apartment on the third. Once in a while, the warning was about something he'd be cooking, but often it was more unexpected ...

The Origami Lab, The New Yorker, February 19, 2007

One of the few Americans to see action during the Bug Wars of the nineteen-nineties was Robert J. Lang, a lanky Californian who was on the front lines throughout, from the battle of the Kabutomushi Beetle to the battle of the Menacing Mantis and the battle of the Long-Legged Wasp. Most combatants in the Bug Wars -- which were, in fact, origami contests -- were members of the Origami Detectives, a group of artists in Japan who liked to try outdoing one another with extreme designs of assigned subjects ...

And many more in the article archive...