Susan Orlean is an accomplished author with some creative book titles to her name. For example, there’s The Orchid Thief, about the world of rare orchid collections and arrests in Florida swamps for orchid poaching, and the The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People, a collection of profiles including Spain’s first woman matador.
Curiosity, Orleans says, is the key to her work: “I generally have two kinds of stories that appeal to me. If I have stumbled into a world that I had no idea existed, I want to look at it.
“It’s how I look at the world. I’m curious about why people do what they do and I don’t feel the need to judge it. I’m not looking for a hobby. I’m looking to write about things that drive people.”
That curiosity has led Orlean, 62, to publish six books over a 30-year career, starting withSaturday Night in 1990, as well as creative nonfiction in The New Yorker, Vogue, Rolling Stone,Esquire and Outside, among other publications. She speaks this week at Monterey Peninsula College’s Guest Authors Series, and signs books after the talk.
“Asking questions is all you need,” she says. “I am always surprised by the things that catch my eye; it’s usually something I’m not expecting. I never thought I’d write any of the books or many of the articles I’ve written.”
Their subjects have included the real-life story of Rin Tin Tin, personal vignettes on her backyard turkeys and chickens getting caught in a rainstorm, her son’s experience using Google, and her home life. (She splits her time between Los Angeles and New York.)
Orlean sees the skill of a journalist as having a heightened sense of the world, then conveying to a reader why a subject is worth reading about.
“I think the world is increasingly baffling and journalists are in a good position to engage people in it,” she says. “We also need to not recoil from the world, because it has become so screwy. We need to learn about it and celebrate it.”
Susan Orlean’s early gigs that diverted her away from law school included a stint at a tiny magazine, then a job at alt-weekly newspaper Willamette Week, both in Portland, Oregon.
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