Author, New Yorker staffer discusses his work, career at Peters library event
When Patrick Radden Keefe was in high school in the early 1990s, he had a singular ambition – to write for The New Yorker.
When he revealed to an English teacher that he wanted to join the staff of what could very well be America’s most prestigious magazine, it was met with a little bit of skepticism. After all, the pantheon of writers that have been published in The New Yorker include the likes of Robert Caro, Woody Allen, Lillian Ross and Pauline Kael.
Keefe persevered, though. And the 48-year-old native of an Irish-American neighborhood in Boston is now one of The New Yorker’s marquee storytellers.
“I figured out what I wanted to do with my life in a high school library,” Keefe explained Nov. 7 at Peters Township High School. “It took a long time to turn that into reality.”
Keefe was at the high school for the Peters Township Library Foundation’s annual Novel November event. Past guests have included fiction writers like Victoria “V.E.” Schwab and Andy Weir, so Keefe was a bit of a departure from the format since his metier is narrative nonfiction writing marked by deep reporting. But he did fit into the format since he employs the brisk storytelling techniques of fiction in his work.
Along with with writing about everything from Anthony Bourdain and Guinean iron reserves to an English teenager masquerading as the progeny of a Russian oligarch, Keefe has a handful of books to his credit, including two highly regarded best-sellers: “Empire of Pain,” which tells the story of the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, the company that brought the world OxyContin; and “Say Nothing,” which dissects the 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland that finally ended in the 1990s. “Say Nothing” won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, and “Empire of Pain” was a finalist for the honor.
A nine-part dramatization of “Say Nothing” is set to arrive on Hulu this Thursday. It follows “Painkiller,” the 2023 Netflix series that told the story of the Sackler family in dramatic form.
Growing up in a house full of books and a youthful fan of Hardy Boys novels, Keefe said his earliest memories revolve around being read to by his mother. Later on, he started developing the skills that would land him at The New Yorker by subjecting the magazine’s stories to almost microscopic scrutiny, down to the way they were structured and the number of sources that were used.
“You learn about the world in a form of stories,” Keefe told Maura Kelly, president of the Peters Township Library Foundation, in an onstage interview in the high school auditorium. “I can process much more information if you tell it to me in the form of a story. … It’s innate to who we are.”
Keefe admitted that his own reading tastes tend toward fiction – mysteries, specifically – because when he reads nonfiction it “feels like work.” He also admitted that it’s not too likely that he will ever join the ranks of novelists.
“I tried to write fiction quite a lot when I was young and proved to be not good at it,” he said.
The guest for next year’s Novel November event has already been announced – it will be Shawn “SA” Cosby, the crime writer whose output includes “Razorblade Tears,” “Blacktop Wasteland” and “My Darkest Prayer.” Tickets will go on sale after Labor Day. Information will be available at ptlibrary.org.