Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s parents devoted their lives to the Socialist Workers Party, and they did their best to make sure their son followed in their revolutionary footsteps. Rebecca Touger talks to him about family, politics, and life as a young Trotskyite.

Kevin Roose is just an average college student: he sings in an a cappella group, he writes for the newspaper, and he studied abroad—at Jerry Falwell’s evangelical Liberty University. Listen to an interview about his new book, The Unlikely Disciple.

Susan Jane Gilman set off for China hoping to become a female Jack Kerouac. She recounts her adventures in Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, and talks about the book with SMITH contributor Rebecca Touger.

Mary Elizabeth Williams doesn’t want it all. She just wants some of it—a home namely, one in New York City, the land that she loves. Check out our interview with her, and an excerpt from her new memoir, Gimme Shelter.

Last week, we published Kipp Friedman’s “Life With Father,” about the author’s year with his recently divorced father in late-1970s New York City. We asked him a few questions his father, his son, and his relationship with the city in which he was raised.

Kathleen Rooney bared it all—and got paid to do it. In Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object, Rooney recounts her experiences as a nude life drawing model. Check out her g-chat interview with Katherine Wootton.

Artist Kim Smith combines images and text to create delicate, whimsical graphic memoirs. Check out our interview with her, and get a sneak peek at the collages from her new book, Where Quirky Meets Menacing.

“I think if I knew that I was writing a memoir, I would have felt really constrained by that. But I never did sit down to write a memoir. I was just writing what I saw, what I felt was true.”

The death of a loved one is something that you can never be really be [...]

“It’s really a process of disrobing to find your own voice. Keep pulling off the layers of social expectation and all these things you put on yourself and get down to you. It’s a lot harder to figure out who you are, and therefore speak as yourself than you think.”
When Norah Vincent goes after a [...]

“What I miss most is the times when I was really struggling. I miss being tortured with a group of girls. We’d all bitch together about the hills they made us climb, our thighs shaking. I miss being in a gross bunk worried if we heard raccoons. But I don’t miss crying myself to sleep, [...]