Sandy Allen is the former BuzzFeed features editor and co-founder of the online literary magazine Wag’s Revue. Their essays have been featured in Best American Essays and Best American Science and Nature Writing. Sandy is the author of the memoir A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story about Schizophrenia, about their uncle. Sandy spoke at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show on January 30th, Caught in the Act alongside Christopher J. Yates, Elif Shafak, and Michael Wolff. We spoke to Sandy ahead of the show…   Describe your current project: “In 2009, writer Sandy Allen got something in the mail from their uncle Bob. It was his autobiography, typed on sixty pages in all-capital letters. Bob was a self-described ‘hermit’ who lived in a Californian desert. Sandy didn’t know him well. On the phone, he said he wanted to get his story “out there” because it was “true.” In A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story about Schizophrenia, they share his story with the world. ​ “A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise is written in two fonts. In one, Allen tells their uncle Bob’s life story faithfully to his account — animating his childhood and teenage years in tumultuous […]

Christopher J. Yates was formally a puzzle editor in London, and the author of the debut novel, Black Chalk, a “Best of the Year” selection by NPR. His new novel Grist Mill Road received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly. Christopher spoke at House of SpeakEasy’s Seriously Entertaining show on January 30th, Caught in the Act alongside Sandra Allen, Elif Shafak, and Michael Wolff. We spoke to Christopher ahead of the show…   Describe your current project: It’s 1977, London, and a punk band that supplanted the Sex Pistols hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. What is your earliest memory involving reading or writing? I wrote a story in school when I was 7 called ‘The Caves of Time’ for which my teacher gave me the unlikely mark 21 out of 20. A few days later, my mother took me into my local indie bookstore to pick out a “prize” for having written this story. There on the shelves, calling out to me, was a book called “The Caves of Time,” the first book in the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Obviously, I snatched it up and have loved bookstores and stories ever since. What is your favorite line from your current work? Wow, that’s […]