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New Yorker writer William Finnegan leads a counter life as an excessively compulsive surfer. In his deeply lyrical self-portrait Barbarian Days, Finnegan chronicles his lifelong adventures from a young man chasing waves all over the world to becoming a distinguished writer and war reporter. Part coming-of-age story, part thriller, part cultural study, Finnegan’s vivid memoir explores the gradual mastering of a little understood art. Join Finnegan as he returns to the Pacific coast to discuss his revelatory pursuit of the perfect wave with David Rensin, author of All For a Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora.
William Finnegan is the author of Cold New World, A Complicated War, Dateline Soweto, and Crossing the Line. He has twice been a National Magazine Award finalist and has won numerous journalism awards, including two Overseas Press Club awards since 2009. A staff writer at the New Yorker since 1987, he lives in Manhattan.
David Rensin has written or co-written 17 books, seven of them NY Times bestsellers. They include All for a Few Perfect Waves, an oral/narrative biography of rebel surfing icon Miki Dora; The Mailroom, an oral history of what it’s like to start at the bottom dreaming of the top in Hollywood; and Devil at My Heels, the autobiography of WWII/Olympian Louis Zamperini. He lives and surfs in Ventura, California.
