Tom Perrotta

We're kicking off season 12 with a literary legend who doesn't just limit himself to the literary realm.

Tom Perrotta's novels, Election and Little Children, have been made into Academy Award nominated films.

And his books, The Leftovers and Mrs. Fletcher, were adapted into acclaimed TV series on HBO.

I have to say, The Leftovers was one of the most wonderfully weird and creepy stories I've ever seen, and I'm still thinking about it years later.

He's written 11 novels so far, including his latest, Ghost Town, which follows a 1970s New Jersey teen who finds himself drawn to a local girl and her Ouija board after he suffers a tragedy.

Tom visited A Mighty Blaze to talk with our own co-founder, Caroline Leavitt, about how the past stays with us, how he structured his latest book to ensure a fast pace, and the metaphorical ghosts that were haunting him when he started to write Ghost Town.

So settle in and enjoy the conversation as I pass the Blaze torch to Caroline and the man Time Magazine called the Steinbeck of Suburbia, Tom Perrotta.

[gentle music]

Yes.

I am talking about Election, 1999, based on Tom Perrotta's novel, directed by Alexander Payne.

We've got Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick, the terrifyingly ambitious overachiever running for class president.

Pick Flick.

HBO's The Leftovers.

Based on Tom Perrotta's novel and co-created by Perrotta and Damon Lindelof.

The premise is stunningly simple.

One day, randomly, 2% of the world's population vanishes instantly.

...

Leftovers, yeah, in- famously was based on a book, that that book's contents were entirely covered in the second season, but they retained the author, Tom Perrotta, as a, as a, as a writer and showrunner, and him and Damon Lindelof turned that into something so much more than its source material.

But in Del-

Mm-hmm.