The Believer

He's a social epidemiologist, and he investigates the link between big events and human society.

He's been in the New York Times, Time, The Believer, many other outlets.

Associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, and more.

I mean, his credentials are off the charts.

I didn't really have any ideas in terms of like craft, like plot and my character and stuff like that.

And when I came back, um, the writer's block where I work now and have worked for a long time, I've been open for a couple of years and it was like a funny sort of, uh, trading places situation because those guys who opened that store had just moved from new york to vegas and so they they had opened the store right when i moved to new york and so i came back and i was like hey i've been a bookseller in new york we actually knew some of the same people and so it was like you know if you guys need any help like we'd really love to be part of it in whatever whatever form i'm happy to like volunteer my time um and it just so happened that like there was a something was starting to coalesce in vegas at that time on the literary side of things because the believer magazine had just moved to unlv the local university here And the writer's block was starting to do some stuff with them, some programming.

The writer's block also had its own little residency.

And so there were certain writers that would come through, like Sarah Marshall, who has that I think she's most known for people her podcast you're wrong about but she was working on this long form piece about true crime at the time and just like a bunch of people came through that poet Paul Tran was there it's like so I was like interacting with writers in a way that I just didn't think was possible in Vegas it's like in New York that would happen all the time but here I was like oh people are being brought out here for stuff And so as the believer was trying to establish its identity within Vegas, I just naturally ran into a bunch of different writers and editors and like the local magazines here were trying to really get more of like a literary thing going on.

And so I started writing like these little tiny like dispatches for like the local magazines.

And right place, right time, like I...

the believer was doing their first like literary festival and they were looking for more local writers to participate in some of the events.

And so I got tapped to do one of those and, um, And then shortly after that, I interned at The Believer and it was like, it was kind of like, and then I started freelancing and it was like, I sort of just like learned and like cobbled together.

It was long-listed for the CBC Canada Reads in 2020.

And she's also done comics in places like The Believer, The New Yorker, McSweeney's.

And she teaches memoir and comics at Gotham Writers' Workshop, and she was also the 2021-'22 Canadian writer in residence at the University of Calgary, so a lot of accolades in addition to all the stuff that you do at home as well.

You had three kids in five years, which is a, a real p- ... uh, piece of work in its own right, and, and, and then [laughs] so that's awesome.

Oh, that's a great way.

Wasn't it Nick Hornby who used to write this column in The Believer, I think, and it was a monthly book column.

It was divided into books I read and books I bought.

Yeah, no, I think that's right.