![Orlean Susan Aif2017](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/0546afaf-3fb7-4fe0-9497-8f8fe6479c37/Orlean_Susan_AIF2017.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=290&q=80&rect=0%2C0%2C1000%2C1000&w=290)
Susan Orlean
Writer, The New Yorker; Author
Susan Orlean is the best-selling author of eight books, including The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup; My Kind of Place; Lazy Little Loafers; and Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. Her 1999 book, The Orchid Thief, was made into the Academy Award-winning film Adaptation. She is currently writing a book about the Los Angeles Public Library, to be published in 2018. Orlean has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992, and her work has been published in Esquire, Rolling Stone, Outside, Smithsonian, and The New York Times. She was a 2003 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts/Nonfiction in 2014.
Previously
![It’s OK to Be Clueless: Embracing What You Don’t Know to Expand What You Do](https://aspenideasfestival.imgix.net/nullf4864620-6861-40ef-aeeb-7be0e2a2a1b1/35246169250_68652fbdca_h.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=min&fm=jpg&h=225&q=80&rect=0%2C0%2C1600%2C901&w=400)
New York Times best-selling author Susan Orlean says ignorance about a subject is a powerful ignitor of curiosity. As someone who has written about bullfighters, orchid fanati...