Sarah Vowell

Sarah Vowell (born December 27, 1969) is an American author, journalist, and regular contributor to the radio program This American Life on Public Radio International.

Background

Vowell was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma. She earned a B.A. from Montana State University in 1993 and an M.A. at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. Vowell received the Music Journalism Award in 1996.

Deemed a social observer, Vowell has made public appearances in Amsterdam, Seattle, Aspen, and has made appearances on television shows like Nightline, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Late Show with David Letterman. She also makes regular appearances on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Her writing has been published in The Village Voice, Esquire, GQ, Spin, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The San Francisco Weekly, and she has been a regular contributor to the online magazine Salon.

Vowell lives in New York City, cannot swim, is afraid of heights, and does not drive a car. She usually enlists the aid of her friends and family to drive her to plaques and graves when doing research. She suffers from celiac disease, in which the body has an auto-immune reaction to gluten. She's also an atheist.[1]

Vowell is part Cherokee (about 1/8th on her mother’s side and 1/16th on her father’s side). According to Vowell, “Being at least a little Cherokee in northeastern Oklahoma is about as rare and remarkable as being a Michael Jordan fan in Chicago.” She retraced the path of the forced removal of the Cherokee from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma known as the Trail of Tears with her twin sister Amy. This was chronicled on the July 4th episode of This American Life in 1998, which was devoted entirely to the story. [2]

Vowell’s twin sister Amy gave her a hair of abolitionist guerrilla warrior John Brown for Christmas, which now decorates her wall.

For the audio recording of her 2002 book, Vowell was able to call upon such friends as Conan O'Brien, Seth Green, Stephen Colbert, David Cross, Paul Begala, Michael Chabon, Norman Lear, and They Might Be Giants to contribute to the reading. The resulting excerpts were posted in McSweeney's Internet Tendency.[3]

Vowell had friends Conan O'Brien, Jon Stewart, Stephen King, Dave Eggers, Brad Bird, and Catherine Keener assist her to record the audiobook version of her 2005 book Assassination Vacation.

In 2004, Vowell provided the voice of Violet, the shy teenager in the Brad Bird-directed Pixar animated film The Incredibles and reprised her role for the various related video games. The makers of The Incredibles discovered Vowell from an episode of This American Life where she and her father fire a homemade cannon. Pixar made a test animation for Violet using audio from that sequence.

She also wrote and was featured in Vowellet: An Essay by Sarah Vowell included on the DVD version of The Incredibles, where she reflects on the differences between being super hero Violet and being an author of history books on the subject of assassinated presidents, and what it means to her nephew Owen.

In 2005, Vowell served as a guest columnist for the New York Times during several weeks in July, briefly filling in for Maureen Dowd.

For the month of February (2006), she will be writing a column for The New York Times, which will appear in both the print edition, and online at www.nytimes.com in the TimesSelect section (beginning on February 1st).

Bibliography

1997 Radio On: A Listener's Diary ISBN 0-312-18301-1
2000 Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World ISBN 0-743-20540-5
2002 The Partly Cloudy Patriot ISBN 0-743-24380-3
2005 Assassination Vacation ISBN 0-743-26003-1

Radio

Sarah Vowell has pieces featured on the following episodes of This American Life:

31 – When you talk about music
45 – Media fringe
54 – Sinatra
56 – Name change
58 – Small towns
65 – Who's Canadian?
67 – Your dream, my nightmare
70 – Other people's mail
76 – Mob
81 – Guns
90 – Telephone
94 – How to
97 – Death to wacky
104 – Music lessons
107 – Trail of tears, devoted entirely to Sarah Vowell's story about the Trail of Tears
114 – Last words
118 – What you lookin' at?
125 – Apocalypse
128 – Four corners
129 – Advice
141 – Invisible worlds
148 – The angels wanna wear my red suit
151 – Primary
167 – Memo to the people of the future
174 – Birthdays, anniversaries, and milestones
191 – I know what you did this summer
226 – Reruns
235 – The balloon goes up
239 – Lost in America, including a story about The Battle Hymn of the Republic and John Brown
244 – MacGyver
247 – What is this thing?
256 – Living without
277 – Apology
291 – Reunited
305 – This American Life Holiday Spectacular - Listen to "Christmas at Valley Forge" (lyrics by Sarah Vowell, music by Marah)

External links