Master Class: The Art of Interviewing: How To Get People To Tell You Their Stories (And Their Secrets)
Master Class: The Art of Interviewing: How To Get People To Tell You Their Stories (And Their Secrets)
2 Sessions: Sundays, March 15 + 22
12:00-2:00pm ET
Tricia Romano
An interview isn’t just a series of questions, it’s a conversation—a dance between the interviewer and the subject. Take it from Tricia Romano, the author of The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper that Changed American Culture (Public Affairs, 2024), which Dwight Garner, writing for the New York Times Book Review, called “A well-made disco ball of a book.”
As someone who has interviewed thousands of people—included more than 200 subjects for a recent oral history— each interview was incredibly different. Some of my interviews have been short and sweet—packed with information but very quick and to the point. Others have been long and meandering, fun during the moment, but in the end, did not yield much useful information.
You will find that every interview is like a fingerprint—completely unique. Some subjects are open books and love to talk. Other interviewees are like talking to a wall. Your job is to get the information you need for your profile, book, or Q&A from them as painlessly as possible.
We’ll talk about what makes Taffy Brodesser-Akner such an amazing profiler. We’ll analyze some of the techniques that print journalists like Susan Orlean, Danyel Smith, and Wesley Lowery use for their interviews and how NY Times journalist Wesley Morris handles his questions. We will discuss what made Joan Didion such a compelling interviewer.
In addition to examples from some of the aforementioned writers, we’ll look at some of my own interviews from The Freaks Came Out To Write and Q&A’s I conducted and talk about what worked and what I wish I would have done differently. We’ll also try a few in-class live attempts at interviews to demonstrate how to navigate conversations.
We’ll analyze some of the different approaches for interviewing subjects as well as talk about the techniques, such as:
How do you prepare for an interview?
How do “friendly” interviews for profiles differ from those that are antagonistic?
How do you broach difficult subject matter with your interviewees?
How do you handle interviewees who possess strong media training? How do you get them to actually answer your question? And what do you do when they won’t?
How do you use an interview to draw out “color” for your story or book—details about an environment, events in the past, or details about another person?
To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by Friday, March 6.
Tricia Romano is the author of The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper that Changed American Culture (Public Affairs, 2024) which Dwight Garner, writing for the New York Times Book Review, called “A well-made disco ball of a book.” It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Choice Awards, and a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize. A fellow at MacDowell, Ucross and Millay artist residencies, her work has been published in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Daily Beast, Men’s Journal, Elle, Alta Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. She has been a staff writer at the Seattle Times and served as the editor in chief of The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative newsweekly.
Romano began her eight- year career at the Village Voice as an intern. As a contributing writer she wrote features and award-winning cover stories about culture and music. Her reported column, Fly Life, gave a glimpse into the underbelly of New York nightlife.
