Peace Corps, Publishing on Amazon and Interviewing Celebrities with Larry Grobel

Lawrence Grobel is a freelance writer who has written 29 books and hundreds of articles for national magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Newsday, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Reader’s Digest, American Way, Parade, Details, TV Guide, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Penthouse, Diversion, Writer’s Digest, and AARP. He has been a contributing editor at Playboy, Movieline, Hollywood Life, Autograph, New Zealand’s World, Bulgaria’s Ego, and Poland’s Trendy magazines. Playboy called him “the Interviewer’s Interviewer” after publishing his interviews with Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Marlon Brando, and Al Pacino; he subsequently made news as the result of his controversial Playboy interviews with Gov. Jesse Ventura and former Indiana basketball coach Bob Knight.

Between 1968-71 he taught in the Peace Corps at the Ghana Institute of Journalism in West Africa. He created the MFA in Professional Writing program for Antioch University in 1977 and served as its Director for three years. In 1981 he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for fiction. His 1985 book Conversations with Capote received a PEN Special Achievement award and reached the top of several bestseller lists. Grobel’s books include: Conversations with Capote; The Hustons; Conversations with Brando; Talking with Michener; Above the Line: Conversations About the Movies; Endangered Species: Writers Talk About Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives; Climbing Higher with Montel Williams (a N.Y. Times bestseller and Publisher’s Weekly Best Book in 2004); The Art of the Interview: Lessons from a Master of the Craft (also a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book in 2004); Al Pacino: In Conversation with Lawrence Grobel (French Film Critics Award for Best International Book of 2009); Conversations with Robert Evans; Yoga? No, Shmoga! (a yoga satire); Icons (a collection of 15 celebrity profiles); I Want You in My Movie! Al Pacino’s 5 Year Obsession with Wilde Salome; a memoir, You Show Me Yours; Madonna Paints a Mustache (152 poems about celebrities); the novels Catch a Fallen Star and Begin Again Finnegan, and two books of short stories: The Narcissist, and Schemers, Dreamers, Cheaters, Believers.

He has written the texts for two coffee table books on Marilyn Monroe and Barbra Streisand published by Taschen. His latest books are You, Talking to Me, 120 Lessons Learned from Interviewing Celebrities, and two volumes of Screenplays, adapted from his novels. Joyce Carol Oates has called him “the Mozart of interviewers” and J.P. Donleavy has called him “the most intelligent interviewer in the United States.” From 2001—2011 he taught seminars on The Art of the Interview, The Literature of Journalism, Articles to Film, and Autobiography & the Memoir at UCLA. He has appeared on CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Charlie Rose Show, NPR’s The Treatment, MarcMaron”s WTF and Adam Carolla’s podcasts, and in two documentaries, Salinger and Al Pacino’s Wilde Salome. He is married to artist and textile designer Hiromi Oda and they have two daughters. His blog, books and articles can be found on his website: www.lawrencegrobel.com and on Amazon.

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