About me

What can I tell you? I am the product of a happy and relatively uneventful childhood in Cleveland, Ohio (back when the Indians were still a lousy team, and before they became a really good team and then again became a somewhat lousy team, although I have hope again…) This was followed by a happy and relatively squandered college career at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (back when Ann Arbor hosted a Hash Bash every spring). I studied literature and history and always dreamed of being a writer, but had no idea of how you went about being a writer – or at least the kind of writer I wanted to be: someone who wrote long stories about interesting things, rather than news stories about short-lived events. There is no guidebook to becoming that kind of writer, so I assumed I’d end up doing something practical like going to law school, much as the thought of it made me cringe. After college, I moved to Portland, Oregon (back when Portland was cappuccino-free) to kill some time before the inevitable trek to law school – and amazingly enough I lucked into a writing job at a tiny now-defunct monthly magazine. That led to a job at an alternative newsweekly in Portland where I wrote music reviews and feature pieces. While I was in Portland, Mt. St. Helens erupted; I started writing for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice; I learned to cross-country ski; I failed to learn how to cook.

Yes, he was the most handsome dog in the world. His name was Cooper and in this picture he’s three years old. He was my first Welsh Springer Spaniel. Cooper topped out at about forty-nine pounds; he enjoyed swimming, eating plastic, sitting on top of the newspaper while I was reading it, and roast chicken. He is dearly missed. I now keep company with another Welshie (the delightful Ivy) and a Smooth Fox Terrier (the devilish but also delightful Buck) and a very tolerant cat (Leo).

I moved to Boston in 1982 (back before they built the Ted Williams Tunnel and long before the Red Sox reversed the curse). I wrote for the Boston Phoenix and the Boston Globe, and started work on my first book, Saturday Night. Four years later I moved to New York. I learned how to order take-out food; wrote The Orchid Thief; became a staff writer at The New Yorker; got married. A few years ago, we moved to Los Angeles—kind of by accident, but, as it turns out, a happy accident, and for the time being we’re staying put.

These days, I spend most of my time writing for The New Yorker and working on books. My side projects? I do a weekly column for Medium, run a book club on Literati, have lots of speaking engagements, and do some television writing, including a stint on How to With John Wilson (HBO) and the forthcoming adaptation of The Library Book.