The Write Stuff: Laurel Braitman on The Least Interesting Thing About Art

The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

Laurel Braitman is author of Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves (Simon & Schuster, June 2014). She just completed her PhD in history and anthropology of science at MIT and has written for Pop Up Magazine, The New Inquiry, Orion and other publications. When she isn't writing, she is organizing concerts for gorillas, sea lions and buffalo. She is a TED Fellow and an affiliate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts. She lives on a houseboat in Sausalito, California.

When people ask what do you do, you tell them... ?

It depends on my mood. But I usually just say I'm a writer. People then very quickly try to find out if that's "how you pay your bills." I suppose they think this means that you're a "real" writer, whatever that means.

What's your biggest struggle -- work or otherwise?

The aspects of contemporary adult life that include calling large businesses with phone trees, paying parking tickets on time, dealing with insurance companies, or organizing receipts for taxes. Somehow writing a book or finishing a PhD seems a thousand times easier for me than taking care of these things.