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Claudia Kalb '85
Name:
Claudia Kalb
Current Home:
Alexandria, VA
Place of Birth:
Hong Kong
Education:
Amherst College, BA, English; Columbia University, MA, International Affairs
Why did you choose to come to Amherst?
I was captivated by everything about the place: the view from Memorial Hill, small class sizes, snowy winters, top-notch professors, Bart's Ice Cream and a campus filled with smart, motivated and passionate people.
Most memorable or most influential class at Amherst:
Biology, freshman year: I quickly learned that dissection was not my forte and went running to the English department, where I spent four wonderful years.
Most memorable or most influential professor:
Stanley Rabinowitz. He introduced me to the wonders of Russian lit and his passion for reading and writing invigorated my own.
Research interests?
I have always found myself drawn to the psychology of human behavior. This is fascinating terrain filled with conundrums, controversies and possibilities. Over the last few years, I have focused my reporting on human achievement through the lens of science, history, culture and biography. In my first book, Andy Warhol was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History’s Great Personalities, I explore the challenges and triumphs of 12 icons, from Warhol and Marilyn Monroe to Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin. My new book, Spark: How Genius Ignites, from Child Prodigies to Late Bloomers, explores moments of discovery and when they happen in the arc of a life.
Spark was inspired by my own journey as a journalist. My path was circuitous and I have long been fascinated by the odysseys of others. In each of the 12 individuals I profile—including Isaac Newton, Yo-Yo Ma, Julia Child, Maya Angelou and Eleanor Roosevelt—I explore creativity, inspiration, family, mentors, grit, failure, luck and the many other elements that fuel great achievement. What role do our personalities play in the livelihoods we pursue? Are we born with talent or lured by passion? What propels some individuals to reach extraordinary heights in the earliest years of life while others uncover their destiny decades later?
Awards and Prizes:
Awards include: National Magazine Award Finalist (with a team of Newsweek writers) for Newsweek cover package, "AIDS at 25;" Front Page Award, Newswomen's Club of New York for "Girl or Boy? The New Science of Sex Selection." Fellowships include: Casey Fellowship at the Journalism Center on Children & Families; Boot Camp fellowship at the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT; and John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University.
Favorite Book:
I don't have a single favorite (too many to choose from!), but as a longtime Newsweek staff writer, I will always love Floater, by Calvin Trillin, for its writing, humor and spot-on depiction of life at a news magazine.
Favorite Author:
To name just a few: Trillin, Jane Austen, Willa Cather, John McPhee, Oliver Sacks, Maya Angelou, Charlotte Bronte, Maurice Sendak, Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Tips for aspiring writers?
Read. Write. Rewrite. Figure out a way to live with the insecurities and doubts—there will be many—and believe steadfastly in the power of edits and revisions. Do not compare yourself to other writers. Admire them, study them, question them, but rely on yourself. Keep a notebook and pencil next to your bed to capture wandering thoughts and nighttime brainstorms. Take walks. Start small: one sentence, then another. Explore, experiment, let your voice free.
Tell us a bit about your path to becoming an author:
As a kid, I “read” the New Yorker—mostly just the cartoons—while dreaming about becoming a writer. I wrote sentences in my head as I fell asleep, scribbled in a journal and reveled in the crinkle of plastic covers on library books. At Amherst, I loved nothing more than crossing the quad, snow underfoot, to read poetry, short stories and novels at Frost. Coursework felt like a gift. I wrote occasional stories for the Amherst Student, but didn't pursue journalism seriously until I got to graduate school at Columbia, where I took courses at the journalism school and edited a student magazine at the School of International and Public Affairs. A summer internship writing for the Jakarta Post in Indonesia got me hooked. My first story spotlighted a battle over bricks at an historic site: archaeologists wanted to preserve the remains while villagers wanted to sell them to survive. No story, I quickly learned, is ever black and white. After grad school, I landed a job at Newsweek as a researcher and was lucky enough to get sent out to bureaus in Chicago and Boston before moving up the ranks to senior writer back at headquarters in Manhattan. In 2011, after 17 years at the magazine, I set out on my own as an independent journalist. Since then, I’ve written features for a variety of publications, including a series of cover stories for National Geographic about the origins of genius. The subject lured me in, challenged me and inspired me to write Spark.
Learn more at claudiakalb.com.