In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Laurie Gwen Shapiro chats with Gabriella about the choices she made while writing The Stowaway: A Young Man’s Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica, the true story of Billy Gawronski, a New York teenager, who stowed away on a ship bound for Antarctica in 1928.
We hear from Laurie Shapiro about Billy’s determination, after three failed attempts, to travel on the first American expedition to Antarctica since 1840. Laurie tells us what inspired her to write the book and why she opened it by describing Billy’s plunge into the freezing cold Hudson River in the wee small hours. She also explains how she portrayed the historical context of Billy’s expedition and how she conducted the research for The Stowaway, including an incredible surprise that profoundly shaped the story. As a writing teacher, Laurie shares, in fascinating depth, tips and tricks for crafting a captivating life story.
‘THE STOWAWAY is an engaging story, engagingly told, that makes the reader root for Billy … prompts one to ponder the effects of social class on fate, and the special qualities that make some people push themselves to the limit.’
Wall Street Journal
It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet’s final frontier?
Everyone wanted in on the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning’s every stage. And then, the night before the expedition’s flagship set off, Billy Gawronski—a mischievous, first-generation New York City high schooler, desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business—jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard.
Could he get away with it?
From the soda shops of New York’s Lower East Side to the dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica’s blinding white and deadly freeze, author Laurie Gwen Shapiro ‘narrates this period piece with gusto’ (Los Angeles Times), taking readers on the ‘novelistic’ (The New Yorker) and unforgettable voyage of a plucky young stowaway who became a Roaring Twenties celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps era.
‘The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the most remarkable feat of science and daring of the Jazz Age,The Stowaway is a thrilling adventure that captures not only the making of a man but of a nation.’
David Grann, bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon.
Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Photographer: Franco Vogt
Laurie Gwen Shapiro is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York, The Daily Beast, Lapham’s Quarterly, Slate, Aeon, The Forward and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her documentary film awards include an Independent Spirit Award for directing IFC’s Keep the River on Your Right, and an Emmy nomination for HBO’s Finishing Heaven. Shapiro is the 2021 winner of Best NYC Essay or Article from the GANYC Apple Awards, the 2021 winner of the Damn History Award for ‘The Improbable Journey of Dorothy Parker’s Ashes’ for The New Yorker and gold medallion winner in the People Profiles category for the Silurian Press Club’s 77th annual Excellence in Journalism Awards. The Stowaway (Simon & Schuster) is her best-selling first full-length work of nonfiction. Her next nonfiction book (about Amelia Earhart) will be Amelia and George, for Viking Books, out in 2025. She is an adjunct professor of journalism at The NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
Learn More: https://lauriegwenshapiro.com/