David Maraniss – the two-time Pulitzer Prize Winner and award-winning biographer talked to NSNC Communications Director Bonnie Jean Feldkamp about his writing process.
David shared his writing experiences for writing his most recent book, A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father (2019). For this book he researched his own father with a biographer’s eye. David’s father Elliott Maraniss was a WWII veteran who had commanded an all-Black company in the Pacific. He was spied on by the FBI, named as a Communist by an informant, called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, fired from his newspaper job, and blacklisted for five years. Yet his father never lost faith in America and emerged on the other side with his family and optimism intact.
In our conversation, David gives great writing and research advice when dealing with personal and painful memories, especially when it focuses on family. Watch the full one-hour interview below:
For more great speakers and expert conversations please join us at the NSNC Virtual Conference April 16 & 17. Check out the schedule and register HERE.
