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Ana Marie Cox
Political Columnist, Culture Critic, Mental Health Advocate & “Sober Questioning” Columnist
Ana Marie Cox is a political columnist and culture critic whose writing has appeared in The New Republic, Sports Illustrated, the Washington Post, and Esquire. She writes the “Sober Questioning” column at The Cut (send your queries about recovery-related things to soberquestioning @ nymag dot com). She also hosts the science fiction and political science podcast Space the Nation with Dan Drezner (created to fill the hole in their hearts when The Churn was canceled). You can find out more about Space the Nation here. She’s also a regular on the Stephen King podcast The Losers Club (a favorite episode is this one on recovery themes in King’s work). She hosted “With Friends Like These,” a podcast from Crooked Media from 2017-2022. During the pandemic she had a regular Instagram Live check-in with John Moe, that archive is here.
She conducted the “Talk” interviews featured in the New York Times Magazine from 2015-17. She was the senior political correspondent for MTV News from 2016 until they pivoted to video. She is on cable news more often than she’d like, which isn’t that often. Since starting the snarky political blog Wonkette in 2004, she has worked at a bewildering variety of outlets, including Time magazine, GQ, Air America, and The Guardian. Prior to Wonkette, she was an editor at Mother Jones and at the webzine Suck.com. She is the author of the romantic comedy novel Dog Days.
Cox gained attention in 2008 for being an early, enthusiastic adopter of Twitter and quickly amassed a following of 1.3 million. She has not added much since then but welcomes any new followers who like seeing tweets about recovery, politics, and cute animals. Lately, she writes and Tweets about mental health in general as well. You can hear her story about being a suicide attempt survivor here. You may have read that she’s a Christian now, too. After ten years in the frigid Midwest, she returned home to Austin, TX in December 2020. She is accompanied by her dog, Exley, named for the author Fred Exley.
Cox is available in partnership with Collective Speakers.
Speech Topics
HOW TO MAKE PEOPLE INTERESTING
The transition from pandemic living to whatever we’re in now has made all of us recognize that our people skills are a little rusty. Water cooler conversations? Small talk? Cocktail party chatter? How do you even do that any more? Ana Marie Cox is here to help. In her twenty-plus years as a journalist, Ana has interviewed Hollywood stars and presidential candidates; she’s talked to former white nationalists and disability rights activists. Along the way, she’s learned the tricks and habits that make it easy to talk to anyone. What makes a discussion interesting, it turns out, isn’t what the interviewee has to say — it’s all about what the interviewer asks. Whether it’s overcoming your own shyness or coaxing a story out of someone determined to bore you to death, this talk will give you concrete tips for unlocking the interesting person in all of us.
#WRITING YOUR RECOVERY
Everyone’s recovering from something: Maybe it’s your relationship with substances or your relationship with food. Maybe it’s a relationship gone wrong or a traumatic experience. Maybe it’s just a terrible day. This course will help you reframe whatever it is you’ve been through into a journey towards wholeness and healing.
We will do this by borrowing the narrative structure used for decades by those in 12-step programs: 1) What it was like 2) What happened 3) What you’re like today. Original writing exercises will help you fill out the responses to these questions from different perspectives, going beyond the story you might already be telling yourself. Guided feedback among class participants will help you dig out the most meaningful details and provide a safe, supportive environment for deeper exploration.
By the end of the workshop, you’ll have a free-standing three-part personal essay that can also serve as the bones of a longer piece. You’ll also have a new way of looking at your past and a new way of looking at your future.
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