Sarah Vowell is the acclaimed
author of four bestselling books and has been a contributing
editor for public radio's This
American Life since 1996. She has written documentaries
and monologues about everything from the Cherokee Trail of Tears,
presidential libraries, Frank Sinatra to more personal pieces
about her father's homemade cannon, a youthful obsession with
The Godfather and her own goth makeover.
Sarah Vowell's book Assassination
Vacation (2005) is a hilarious and haunting road trip to
tourist sites devoted to the murders of presidents Lincoln,
Garfield and McKinley. She is also the author of the essay collections
The
Partly Cloudy Patriot (2002) and Take
the Cannoli (2000), and Radio
On (1997), a diary of a year spent listening to American
radio. Her intricately produced audio books feature the voices
of Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, Tony Kushner, Brad Bird, Norman
Lear, Stephen Colbert and Catherine Keener, as well as the music
of Michael Giacchino and They Might Be Giants. Her fifth book,
The
Wordy Shipmates, a history of American Puritans, was
published in 2008.
Vowell is a longtime participant
in the journal and live shows produced by McSweeney's.
She has twice been a guest OP-ed columnist for the opinion page
of The New York Times. She is a former music columnist
for Salon and San Francisco Weekly. Her criticism,
interviews and essays have also appeared in TIME, Esquire,
GQ, Spin, The Los Angeles Times and the
New York Times. She recently contributed the essay on
Montana in the 2008 book, State
by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America. She is a fellow
at the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU; a member
of the Authors Guild Council; and president of the board of
826NYC,
a nonprofit tutoring and writing center for students aged 6-18
in Brooklyn. She has made numerous appearances on the Late
Show with David Letterman, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart,
the Colbert Report, and is a regular on Late Night
with Conan O'Brien. She is the voice of teen superhero Violet
Parr in Brad Bird's Academy Award-winning The Incredibles,
a Pixar Animation Studios film. She lives in New York City.
•••
“Vowell is, at
heart, a storyteller. Her gift is one of cosmic inclusion—allowing
the natural collision of intellect and personality, rigorous
research and generational quirks.”
—The Boston Globe
“Sarah Vowell
is a Madonna of Americana.”
—Los Angeles
Times
“Vowell is and
will continue to be one of the more important voices of her
generation.”
