Series 5, Episode 3: Lisa Napoli on the Challenges of Authorship

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Lisa Napoli has lived in Los Angeles since 2004, where there’s hardly been a dull moment. In over three decades as a journalist, she’s covered presidential campaigns, a hostage standoff, an outdoor hacker convention and the culture of technology, all at a wide variety of news outlets (some which no longer exist) including the New York Times, CyberTimes, MSNBC, and the public radio show Marketplace. For five years, she also covered arts and culture at KCRW. Her first book, Radio Shangri-La, is about the impact of media culture on the mysterious Kingdom of Bhutan, where she was invited to help start a radio station at the dawn of democratic rule. Her second book is titled Ray & Joan, about the late philanthropist Joan Kroc and her husband, the irascible founding chairman of the McDonald’s corporation. Lisa’s latest book, Up All Night, has just been released. She’s at work on a new one about another slice of American media history, the creation of NPR through the lens of the four “founding mothers” of the network. A graduate of Hampshire College, Lisa led an award-winning volunteer cooking group at the Downtown Women’s Center on Skid Row in Los Angeles for over five years. She’s also the founding board president of the Bhutan Media Service, an all-volunteer news outlet created by Bhutanese refugees in the diaspora. Follow Along with Lisa: Website: http://lisanapoli.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisanapoli/ Email: [email protected]