By Brendan O’Meara
Betsy Golden Kellem (@bgkellem) is an attorney, a historian, and a “scholar of the unusual.”
Her piece, “City on Fire,” chronicles “the night violent anti-government conspirators sowed chaos in the heart of Manhattan” … in 1864. It’s a wild piece that shows how history has a way of feeling very fresh.
Betsy’s work has appeared in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and Vanity Fair. She’s a circus aficionado and that is how this plot in Manhattan got on her radar, as P.T. Barnum’s museum was vandalized as part of this scheme.
In this episode we talk about voice, organizing research, and carving out time to write and research around parenting and day jobs.
We also hear from Seyward Darby, EIC and lead editor of this piece for The Atavist about the unique challenges the piece presented on her side of the table.
