Episode
Susan Orlean
- Podcast
- Caropop
- Published
- Sep 10, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3993
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://rss.com/podcasts/thecaropopcast/3138313
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Summary
Susan Orlean has a brilliant talent for crafting compelling narratives from idiosyncratic topics that have piqued her interest: orchid poachers in Florida for The Orchid Thief , a movie star dog for Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend and the Los Angeles Central Library for The Library Book , among others. Last year she shifted the focus to herself for a revealing, inspirational memoir, Joyride, that celebrates pursuing one’s curiosity into odd corners. Here Orlean, who preceded me at the Boston Phoenix by a few years, discusses when she knows a topic has reached critical mass to become a book, whether she does all of her reporting before she begins writing, how she decides how much of herself to put into a story, whether she can write whatever she wants now and how her life was affected by Meryl Streep portraying a fictionalized version of her in Adaptation . (Photo by Chloe Aftel.)