Author: Memoir

Admired and best-selling authors offer advice and discuss their latest books. 

Explore the art of memoir in this author panel with writers Jeffrey Banks, Storyteller: Tales from a Fashion Insider;  Stefan Merrill Block, Homeschooled; and  Ian Jarvis, The Escape Artist.

Jeffrey Banks’ approach to design has earned him some of fashion’s most prestigious awards and honors including: a Coty Award for his signature Menswear collection, the Cutty Sark Award for Outstanding U.S. Designer of Menswear, and the Pratt Institute Award for Excellence. As the designer of Merona Sport, he built an $150 million sportswear line in less than five years. Banks also devotes a good deal of time serving the fashion industry and other causes. He is a member of the Emeritus Board of Directors of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), was a senior Board Member of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), and has served as a Design Critic at the Parson’s School of Design. He has been honored by Publicolor and previously served on the Board of The Ali Forney Center for homeless youth. Banks is also an accomplished writer who has co-authored many fashion titles over the years. Last fall, Banks released his memoir, Storyteller: Tales from a Fashion Insider.

Stefan Merrill Block grew up in Plano, Texas. He is the author of Homeschooled, a memoir, as well as three novels: The Story of Forgetting, The Storm at the Door, and Oliver Loving. Stefan’s fiction has been translated into ten languages, and his stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker Page-Turner, The Guardian, NPR’s Radiolab, GRANTA, and many other publications. He lives with his family in upstate New York, where he is a co-owner of Skate Time, a beloved local roller rink.

Ian Jarvis has multiple bios that include budding scholar, international criminal, professional actor, fashion designer, corporate executive, and author. The one most relevant to his memoir is this: If you read his IMDB profile, you see a successful actor—a guy whose face you've seen in TV shows, mostly the bad guy. So what? The backstory: a nice Jewish boy from New Jersey quits Georgetown University in his junior year and crosses the country in a Chevy truck. He does some plum work as a drug dealer, escapes half a dozen FBI agents at an airport, and lives eight years as a federal fugitive in Paris, London, Ibiza, Corsica, and Morocco. Turning thirty, he decides to return to the US, face the mess he left behind, and find a way back on the rails of the American dream. The acting he got paid for came after that.

Hosted by Illana Levine, actress and podcaster at Little Known Facts with Ilanna Levine.