Tourist Information

On what would have been Bourdain's 70th birthday, we are doing something a little different. We are doing an audio read of a piece titled Giving Up the Ghost: Life and Death By Misadventure written by Brin-Jonathan Butler and published by the Hazlitt   Anthony Bourdain was an American celebrity chef, author and travel documentarian. He starred in programs focusing on the exploration of internation...

Tom Junod is an American journalist who is currently a senior writer for ESPN.com. He is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors.

Brendan O'Meara is the host and founder of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show he started in 2013 to speak with people about the art and craft of telling true stories. He's the author of two books, Six Weeks in Saratoga: How Three-Year-Old Filly Rachel Alexandra Beat the Boys and Became Horse of the Year (SUNY Press) and most recently The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine (Mariner...

Rich Cohen is an American non-fiction writer. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. He is co-creator, with Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger and Terence Winter, of the HBO series Vinyl.

Michael Lewis is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.

Jim Shepard is an American novelist and short story writer who teaches creative writing and film at Williams College. The Vanishing (1988) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd7ckPG_3DA https://www.thebeliever.net/the-vanishing-and-american-sociopathy/  

Cian O'Clery is a director and producer of unscripted television. He is the co-creator and series director/producer of 'Love On The Spectrum'. His series have won numerous awards both in Australia and internationally, including several Emmy Awards. 

David Gessner is the author of thirteen books that blend a love of nature, humor, memoir, and environmentalism, including the New York Times bestselling, All the Wild That Remains, Return of the Osprey, Sick of Nature and Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness. His latest book is titled The Book of Flaco: The World's Most Famous Bird. 

David Nasaw is an American author, biographer and historian who specializes in the cultural, social and business history of early 20th Century America. Nasaw is on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he is the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Professor of History.  His most recent biography, The Patriarch (2012), based on unrestricted and exclusive access to the p...

Ada Ferrer is a Cuban-American historian. She is a professor of history and Caribbean Studies at Princeton University. She won the 2015 Frederick Douglass Prize for her book Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution. She was also awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book Cuba: An American History.

Rodney Ascher is an American film director, best known for Room 237 (2012), A Glitch in the Matrix (2021) and The Nightmare (2015).

Spencer Kornhaber is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Before joining The Atlantic as an editor in 2011, he was a staff writer at OC Weekly, an editor at Patch, and a freelancer for Spin and The A.V. Club. In 2019, he won the Excellence in Column Writing Award from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists. At The Atlantic, he covers pop culture and music. He is the author of On Divas: Persona, Pl...

A. L. Kennedy is a Scots writer, academic and stand-up comedian. She writes novels, short stories and non-fiction, and is known for her dark tone and her blending of realism and fantasy. She contributes columns and reviews to European newspapers.     

Ben Johnson is a Canadian former sprinter. During the 1987–88 season he held the title of the world's fastest man, breaking both the 100m and the 60m indoor World Records. He won the 100 metres at the 1987 World Championships in Athletics; and at the 1988 Summer Olympics, but was disqualified for doping and stripped of the gold medal.

Michael Azerrad is an American author, music journalist, editor, and musician. A graduate of Columbia University, he has written for publications such as Spin, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. Azerrad's 1993 biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana was named by Q as one of the 50 greatest rock books ever written.

Andrew Hammel holds law degrees from the University of Houston and Harvard Law School and was admitted to the bar of the State of Texas in 1996. He is a former death-row defense lawyer and law professor. He is the author of Ending the Death Penalty: The European Experience in Global Perspective (2010) and many scholarly articles. He is fluent in English and German. His long-form journalism on famo...

Ric Burns is an American documentary filmmaker and writer. He has written, directed and produced historical documentaries since the 1990s, beginning with his collaboration on the celebrated PBS series The Civil War (1990), which he produced with his older brother Ken Burns and wrote with Geoffrey Ward.

Nick McDonell is an American writer who has worked as a journalist, screenwriter, producer, novelist and researcher.

Kim Cross is a New York Times best-selling author and journalist known for meticulously reported narrative nonfiction. A full-time freelance writer, she has bylines in the New York Times, Nieman Storyboard, Outside, Bicycling, Garden & Gun, CNN.com, ESPN.com, and USA Today.

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New York University and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana's Department of Philosophy.

Christopher L. Miller is retired professor in the Department of French and the Department of African American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French, published by the University of Chicago Press. His new book "Impostors: Literary Hoaxes and Cultural Authenticity" examines a series of literary hoaxes, deceptions that involved flagrant acts of...

Charles Leerhsen is a former executive editor at Sports Illustrated. He has written for Rolling Stone, Esquire, and The New York Times. His books include Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty; Crazy Good: The Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America; Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and the Birth of the Indy 500; and Butch Cassidy: The True Story of an American Outlaw. He lives in...

Lori Grinker is an American documentary art photographer and filmmaker from New York City. She is best known for her self-directed, long-term documentary projects, and has conducted these projects through photography, video and multimedia.

Rachel Monroe is a contributing writer at The New Yorker, where she covers Texas and the Southwest.

Gary Smith is an American sportswriter. He is best known for his lengthy human interest stories in Sports Illustrated, where he worked from 1983 to 2013.