Three-part subscriptions to Portland Arts & Lectures, including David Grann’s event on January 25, 2024, are now available! Get yours here.
On January 25, 2024, Literary Arts will host David Grann as the third event of our 2023-24 season of Portland Arts & Lectures.
David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a #1 New York Times bestselling author of nonfiction titles including the National Book Award finalist, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, and his latest book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder. Called “the man Hollywood can’t stop reading,” Grann’s work has been adapted into blockbuster films, including Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. His writing has appeared in The Best American Crime Writing, New York Times Magazine, and Wall Street Journal. He has earned honors including a George Polk Award, a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, and a Cullman Fellowship. He lives with his wife and two children in New York.
Grann’s latest book, The Wager, takes readers to the 1700s to look at the real life story of a shipwreck in Patagonia that turned to mutiny, murder, and a “war over the truth.”
Hear Grann discuss his newest book on this episode of Fresh Air.
“And so I was doing research on mutinies when I came across the account of John Byron, the midshipman from the Wager. And what was so interesting is his book – his account was written in this stilted, old prose, this archaic prose from the 18th century. The F’s were S’s. But as I was reading it, I was just held spellbound by these descriptions of, you know, mutiny and scurvy and shipwreck and then violence on the island and murder and cannibalism. I was like, oh, my God, this account holds the clues to, you know, really one of the more extraordinary sagas.”
What might you find on the shelf of a National Book Award finalist?
Find out some of Grann’s favorite reads, writers, and literary heroes here.
“Because I read so much nonfiction for work, I enjoy fiction most, especially detective novels and mysteries that keep me awake at night.”
When Martin Scorsese was working on his blockbuster adaption of Killers of the Flower Moon, Grann was consulted for all sorts of questions about historical accuracy.
Read this interview in Slate to find out what it is like for Grann to have not one, but two of his works set to be adapted by the legendary director and Leonardo DiCaprio.
“For me, the thing that really struck me was less the parallels with Scorsese’s previous work, but his commitment to this history, and to getting it right. They were going to approach it in their own medium, but they shared that commitment.”
Find out more about Grann’s life and career below!
David Grann was born in New York in 1967. His mother was an executive at the publisher Penguin Putnam and his father was an oncologist at Stamford Hospital and a professor at Columbia University. His interest in storytelling and traveling stems from his youth, when his grandmother would recount his grandfather’s adventures: “She told me that he had been a Russian furrier and a freelance National Geographic photographer, who, in the 1920s, was one of the few western cameramen allowed into various parts of China and Tibet… These stories, along with photographs of his journeys, always filled my imagination.”
In 1989, Grann graduated with his B.A. in government from Connecticut College. After his graduation, he was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and went to Mexico for research. During this time, he explored writing in different genres, and even wrote a novel as an aspiring fiction writer. Grann then went on to earn master’s degrees in international relations at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and in creative writing at Boston University.
Starting as a copyeditor at The Hill in 1994, Grann became the newspaper’s executive editor and quickly progressed in his journalism career. In 1996, he joined The New Republic, where he was a senior editor and writer, before becoming a staff writer at The New Yorker in 2003. It was around this time that Grann realized his education in creative writing could serve his journalism: “In fiction, I struggled with characters and plot and coming up with what people did and said. In nonfiction, I realized that if could find characters and stories that were real, I simply had to excavate them and tell them in a compelling way.” His writing has earned him both a George Polk Award and a Silver Gavel Award, and his colleague Patrick Radden Keefe at The New Yorker called him “one of the great nonfiction writers working today.”
Grann published his nonfiction debut, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, in 2009. The book was a #1 New York Times bestseller that Kirkus called “A colorful tale of true adventure, marked by satisfyingly unexpected twists, turns and plenty of dark portents.” In 2011 Grann released The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, a collection of his nonfiction stories, including “Trial by Fire,” which was cited by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice in discussion of the constitutionality of the death penalty.
Released to wide critical acclaim, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI was published in 2017. The New York Times Book Review said, “Grann takes what was already a fascinating and disciplined recording of a forgotten chapter in American history, and with the help of contemporary Osage tribe members, he illuminates a sickening conspiracy that goes far deeper than those four years of horror. It will sear your soul.” The book was a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction and the winner of the Edgar Award. In 2018, Grann followed with a collection of true crime stories, The Old Man and the Gun, and a literary nonfiction adventure story set in Antarctica, The White Darkness.
Research for his latest book brought Grann to the shores of Wager Island in Patagonia. A story he calls “a parable for our own turbulent modern times,” The Wager came out in 2023 and follows a group of men who are shipwrecked during an expedition from England. A review in The Wall Street Journal named it, “A tour de force of narrative nonfiction,” saying, “Mr. Grann’s account shows how storytelling, whether to judges or readers, can shape individual and national fortunes—as well as our collective memory… The story of the Wager has the weight of myth.”
Called “the man Hollywood can’t stop reading,” Grann has had several of his works adapted for the big screen. In 2023, the highly anticipated film adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon came to theaters, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The duo also acquired the film rights to The Wager before the book was even released. Grann’s books and articles The Lost City of Z, “The Old Man & the Gun,” and “Trial by Fire” have also been adapted into films.
In what has been a big year for the author, Grann was named Barnes & Noble Inaugural Author of the Year in 2023. The Barnes & Noble team said, “A master of nonfiction, much of it based in first-person reportage and archival digging, Grann uses our history as a mirror to entertain us, make us think, and show us who we are now.” Today, Grann lives in New York with his wife and two children.
“Joan Didion famously said, ‘We all tell ourselves stories in order to live.’ Yet, in this case of the men of the Wager, they quite literally have to tell their stories in order to live. And if they don’t tell a good one, they’re going to get hanged. I had never seen such a case where you can see each individual shaping their story and burnishing certain facts and leaving out other facts. And so, I decided rather than try to be some omniscient being, the best way to handle it was just simply to show it.” –Rolling Stone
