Casey Cep has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New Republic. She is the author of Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.

“I want to meet all of these expectations. I want my book to be a page-turner. I want it to be a beautiful literary object. I want it to sell. I want it to do all of these things. But at the end of the day, I just want to feel like I’ve honored this commitment between writer and reader, and writer and source. And those are sometimes in conflict.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@cncep

Cep on Longform

[00:07] Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (Knopf • 2019)

[09:51] The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (Erik Larson • Vintage • 2004)

[10:39] The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (David Grann • Vintage Books • 2010)

[14:30] The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Book You’ll Never Read (Stuart Kelly • Random House • 2006)

[16:50] Go Set a Watchman (Harper Lee • HarperCollins • 2015)

[17:08] Calpurnia’s Cookbook (Monroe County Heritage Museums • 2000)

[20:08] To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee • Grand Central Publishing • 1988)

[22:30] Cep’s Harvard Crimson archive

[22:45] Cep’s Harvard Magazine archive

[23:36] In Cold Blood (Truman Capote • Vintage • 1994)

[23:52] Harper Lee’s Profile of In Cold Blood (Real Simple • 2014)

[24:28] Cep’s Pacific Standard archive

[24:32] Cep's New York Times archive

[24:36] Cep’s New Yorker archive

[25:26] "Mystery in Monroeville" (New Yorker • 2015)

[25:42] "Harper Lee’s Forgotten True Crime Project" (New Yorker • 2015)

[27:42] All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (Theodore Rosegarten • Alfred A. Knopf • 1974)

[27:42] Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (James Agee • Mariner Books • 2001)

[30:35] S-Town

[31:50] "In Cold Blood: The Last to See Them Alive" (Truman Capote • The New Yorker • 1965)

[31:55] Evidence of Things Not Seen (James Baldwin • Picador • 1995)

[32:00] The Basement: Meditiations on Human Sacrifice (Kate Millett • Simon Schuster • 1979)

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