Episode 66 - Laura Lippman: Part 2

Part two of Laura Lippman's chat with Writing Life Podcast about her new novel Wilde Lake begins with the real-life district of Columbia, where Lippman grew up. ----more---- Other Wilde Lake High School alumni include Edward Norton and Michael Chabon. After some insight into the impact of babysitting on Norton's early acting talent, we talked about:

• the utopian impulses behind (and deceitful subtext beneath) the creation of Columbia
• 'We were so self-congratulatory about not seeing race'
  
• the 'You know you grew up in Columbia when...' Facebook page
• 'In writing this book, I came to the realisation that I am very much the product of that high school': Lippman on Columbia's doomed experiment
  
• innocence, childhood and changing moral values
• race, liberalism and the problems of good intentions
• race, height, gender: the challenges of unacknowledged prejudice
• the (Twitter) politics of Calvin Trillin's poem about Chinese food

Part 3/3 to follow.