“I Bet They’ll Talk to Me”

Ted Conover

Award-winning author and journalist

Called the “master of experience-based nonfiction,” award-winning author Ted Conover has worked as a prison guard at Sing Sing, crossed borders with migrant workers, and lived off the grid in the American West. We speak with Ted about his extraordinary life and career as a writer.

INTERVIEWED ON: April 12th, 2023

Books discussed:

Cheap Land Colorado

From Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Newjack, a passage through an America lived wild and off the grid, where along with independence and stunning views come fierce winds, neighbors with criminal pasts, and minimal government and medical services.

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR NONFICTION • An acclaimed journalist sets a new standard for bold, in-depth reporting in this first-hand account of life inside the penal system at Sing Sing.

“Newjack is about as good as it gets—by turns gripping, funny, frightening, and sad.” —The Washington Post Book World

Coyotes

In this classic tale of life among undocumented migrants, Ted Conover, author of Newjack, immerses himself in a world few Americans ever see and fewer still come to know. He gets himself smuggled across the border, works on citrus ranches, accompanies workers to industrial L.A., Phoenix, Florida, and Idaho, and travels deep into Mexico to understand the poverty that begins the whole cycle. He helps migrants workers navigate America and sees it anew through their eyes. By turns harrowing and hilarious, Coyotes is an intimate journey with those who brave hardship and danger to seek a better life north of the border.

Rolling Nowhere

Hopping a freight in the St. Louis rail yards, Ted Conover—winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award—embarks on his dream trip, traveling the rails with “the knights of the road.” Equipped with rummage store clothing, a bedroll, and his notebooks, Conover immerses himself in the peculiar culture of the hobo, where handshakes and intoductions are foreign, but where everyone knows where the Sally (Salvation Army) and the Willy (Goodwill) are. Along the way he encounters unexpected charity (a former cop goes out of his way to offer Conover a dollar) and indignities (what do you do when there are no public bathrooms?) and learns how to survive on the road.