Admired and best-selling authors offer advice and discuss their latest books.
Hosted by actress and podcaster Ilana Levine (Little Known Facts with Ilana Levine) and featuring writers Clémence Michallon, Our Last Resort; Sarah Strohmeyer, A Mother Always Knows; and Thomas Maier, The Invisible Spy: Churchill’s Rockefeller Center Spy Ring and America’s First Secret Agent of World War II.
Clémence Michallon is the author of The Quiet Tenant, a USA Today and international bestseller and nominee for the Hammett Prize. She’s also a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Time Magazine, The Independent, and more. Clémence was born and raised near Paris, has lived in New York since 2014, and became a U.S. citizen in 2022. Our Last Resort is her second thriller.
Sarah Strohmeyer is a bestselling and award-winning novelist whose books include The Secrets of Lily Graves, How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True, Smart Girls Get What They Want, The Cinderella Pact (the basis of the Lifetime Original Movie Lying to Be Perfect), The Sleeping Beauty Proposal, The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives, Sweet Love, and the Bubbles mystery series. A former newspaper reporter, her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Boston Globe. She lives with her family outside Montpelier, Vermont.
Thomas Maier is an award-winning author, journalist, and television producer. He was a producer for both the Emmy-winning Showtime drama Masters of Sex, and the 2024 Paramount+ docuseries Mafia Spies, both adapted from his non-fiction books. His biography, Dr. Spock: An American Life, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The JFK Library hosted a forum about his 2014 book, When Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys, which was excerpted in Time and The Wall Street Journal. At Newsday in New York, Maier twice won the National Society of Professional Journalists’ top prize and several honors, including the Daniel Pearl Award from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and now serves on the paper’s editorial board. He won the 2022 Columbia University Journalism School’s Alumni Award for career achievement.
As an actress, Ilana Levine has performed on stage and screen to critical acclaim. On Broadway, Ilana is best known to musical theater fans for her comedic turn as "Lucy Van Pelt" in the Broadway revival of, You're A Good Man Charlie Brown. Ilana also starred in the Broadway productions of Jake's Women, Wrong Mountain, and The Last Night Of Ballyhoo, and has performed on the Tony Awards. She first appeared on the scene in the HBO series Tanner ’88 directed by Robert Altman and quickly was plucked by Vanity Fair journalist James Wolcott as an “up and comer to watch.” Seinfeld fans recognize her from the infamous episode "The Contest", and she has appeared in many television shows and films including Divorce, Law and Order, Tanner on Tanner, Damages, The Job, Cashmere Mafia, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and Kissing Jessica Stein.