Do you collect anything? Tell us about it and why.
I collect old postcards. My favorite kind are real photo postcards—it's just what it sounds like, where the front of the card is an actual photograph. They're almost always in sepia tones or black and white, and have the depth and detail of film prints. I especially like postcards depicting places I've visited, to see what they looked like in the past. A lot of the postcards in my collection are from the 1950s and later, but I have a handful dated to the '20s, and one of the oldest has a message written on it in December 1904.
What makes you laugh the hardest?
Years ago I read an anecdote wherein someone misheard the attribution of a famous quote. The quote was by Francis Bacon, and the person relating the anecdote spent years of their life thinking that the entire statement was "Knowledge is power, France is bacon." The first time I read that sentence I laughed so hard I cried, and it still makes me laugh when I think of it.
What are your go-to book recommendations?
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford is the best book I've read in years. Set in the 1920s in an alternate United States where the ancient indigenous Cahokia civilization never declined, the novel is a tale of murder, political intrigue, multiculturalism, and belief in a country that is different from ours now in some ways, and all too familiar in others.
Are you a sports fan, who are your teams and why?
I've been a fan of the New York Knicks since the Patrick Ewing/John Starks days in the '90s. In 2006, when I was in school in New York, I was fortunate enough to get to see the Knicks play in Madison Square Garden. They didn't win that game, but I still got to be in the same building as Patrick Ewing! (Spike Lee was probably also there, but my seat was nowhere near courtside.)