Episode 19 — Elissa Schappell

Summary: The guest is Elissa Schappell, author of the story collections USE ME (William Morrow), which was nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the brand new BLUEPRINTS FOR BUILDING BETTER GIRLS, available now from Simon & Schuster. A former senior editor at The Paris Review, Elissa is a contributing editor and the Hot Type book columnist at Vanity Fair. She is also the co-founder and editor-at-large of Tin House magazine. Topics of conversation include: feathers, taxidermy, pigeons, Mike Tyson, Tin House, face tattoos, Delaware, Joe Biden, social identity, elegant segues, the Lower East Side, talking in circles, chameleons, empathy, manners, social graces, George Plimpton, The Paris Review, New York City, temporal lobe epilepsy, Berlin, Portugal, Spy magazine, Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter, and the abundance of good writers in the world.