Editors note: Davidson will be available for interviews. Reporters are also welcome to attend the course, "The Art of the Interview," from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sept. 17, 18, 23, 24, 25 and Nov. 11, 12 and 13.
Best selling author Sara Davidson will be a Hearst Professional-in-Residence this fall at CU-Boulder's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she will offer a graduate course in "The Art of the Interview."
Davidson has interviewed public and private figures such as Richard Nixon, Mick Jagger, Meg Ryan and the Dalai Lama over the past 30 years. She has conducted interviews on radio and television and for newspapers, magazines and books.
Her books "Cowboy" and "Loose Change - Three Women of the Sixties" were best sellers and her writing has appeared in a variety of magazines including Esquire, Rolling Stone, Harper's, the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine and O, the Oprah Winfrey Magazine. She currently conducts interviews for "The Politics of Culture" on National Public Radio and is the host of the radio pilot "True West."
Much of the graduate workshop, which begins on Tuesday, Sept. 17, will focus on what Davidson calls hitting gold. "When you hit something that the person you are interviewing is conceptualizing or realizing for the first time, then you have hit gold. That fresh ground is what we are aiming for," she said.
The class will cover topics including researching and preparing for interviews, dealing with difficult or hostile subjects and developing a personal interviewing style.
The Hearst Professional-in-Residence program provides fellowships for veterans of the print and broadcast media to visit CU-Boulder each semester and provide helpful lessons and advice to students and faculty. It is funded by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.
For more information contact Professor Meg Moritz at (303) 492-1610 or marguerite.moritz@colorado.edu.