Ann Brashares is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, The Here and Now, 3 Willows, The Last Summer (of You and Me), and My Name Is Memory. She lives in New York City with her family. On September 26th, she will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, One for the Road alongside Loudon Wainwright III, Adam Begley, and Erica Wagner (tickets). We spoke to Ann ahead of the show…   Name: Ann Brashares What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? The first book I read on my own steam and at my own pace was a tiny paperback called Dreams of Victory about a girl  (named Victory) so flummoxed by ordinary life, she takes refuge in the stories she tells herself. In the end, it turns out she’s well-suited to fiction writing. It struck an early chord. What is your favorite first line of a novel? One of my favorites is from L.P Hartley’s The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” What writer, past or present, do you wish you could eat dinner with? I’ve been reading a lot of Philip Roth the past few months. It’s annoying for readers of fiction […]

Loudon Wainwright III is a singer-songwriter and actor. In 1968,  he began to write songs, and in 1969 recorded his first album. Wainwright has recorded twenty-seven albums, including his 2010 Grammy Award–winning High, Wide, & Handsome. His songs have been covered by Johnny Cash, Mose Allison, Rufus Wainwright, Bonnie Raitt, and Earl Scruggs, among others. As an actor he has appeared on TV (M*A*S*H, Ally McBeal, Undeclared), in movies (Big Fish, The Aviator, Knocked Up), on Broadway (Pump Boys and Dinettes) and Off Broadway (Hot Lunch Apostles, Surviving Twin). On September 26th, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, One for the Road alongside Ann Brashares, Adam Begley, and Erica Wagner (tickets). We spoke to Loudon ahead of the show…   Name: Loudon Wainwright III Title of most recent work: Liner Notes- About Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & and A Few Of My Other Favorite Things (Read a review from the NY Times) What advice would you give to aspiring writers? Get up every morning and do it (write) for 2 hours What writer past or present do you wish you could eat dinner with? John Updike & Anton Chekhov What writer do you wish you could share with the world The songwriter Tom Lehrer What […]

  Erica Wagner was the literary editor of The London Times for seventeen years and is now a contributing writer for The New Statesman, and consulting literary editor for Harper’s Bazaar. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Economist, The Financial Times, and The New York Times, among others. She is the author of Ariel’s Gift, Seizure, and the short story collection Gravity; she is the editor of First Light: A Celebration of Alan Garner. In 2014 she became the recipient of the Eccles British Library Writer’s Award, and she is a lecturer in creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. She lives in London with her husband and son.   On September 26th, she will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, One for the Road alongside Ann Brashares, Adam Begley, and Loudon Wainwright III (tickets). We spoke to Erica ahead of the show…   Name: Erica Wagner Title of most recent work: Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, the Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge (Read reviews from The Economist and the NY Times) What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? … sitting on my parents’ bed with my favourite book, “The Diamond D and the Dreadful Dragon,”, a Sesame Street book. They were still asleep. I […]

Adam Begley is the author of Updike and, most recently, The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera. He was the books editor of The New York Observer for twelve years. A Guggenheim fellow and a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, the London Review of Books, and The Times Literary Supplement. He lives with his wife in Cambridgeshire. On September 26th, he will be speaking at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show, One for the Road alongside Ann Brashares, Erica Wagner, and Loudon Wainwright III (tickets). We spoke to Adam ahead of the show…   Name: Adam Begley Title of most recent work: The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera. (Read reviews from The Spectator and the NY Times) Describe your current project: I’m currently working on a brief biography of Houdini for the Yale University Press “Jewish Lives” series.  What is your favorite line from your current work? Nadar once described himself as “never having missed the opportunity to talk about rope in a house where someone has been hanged or ought to be hanged.” What is your favorite first line of a novel? “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some […]