Andrew Solomon on a lifetime writing about humanity, surviving the Pacific Ocean and the power of listening

The Secret Life of Writers by Tablo

Andrew Solomon’s work has had a major impact across the world. His books have made concrete changes for the better, fostering empathy and understanding in everyone who reads them. Andrew writes on politics, culture and psychology and is an activist in LGBTQ rights, mental health, and the arts. He’s a Professor of Clinical Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University, a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Yale University and is a former President of PEN American Centre, and currently on their Board of Directors. He founded the Solomon Research Fellowships in LGBT Studies at Yale University and has written for publications such as The New Yorker, the London Times, and more. He’s lectured widely and his TED talks have had over twenty million views.

Andrew’s first book was a study of Russian artists, called The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost. Then came his novel A Stone Boat that was described by Harold Bloom as ‘one of the authentic achievements in American fiction’. His memoir, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression won the 2001 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and was one of the London Times One Hundred Best Books of the Decade. Solomon’s book, the bestselling Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity came out in 2012 and tells the stories of families raising exceptional children who find profound meaning in doing so. It received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; the Wellcome Book Prize and many more accolades. There was also a celebrated documentary based on the book. The last book Andrew published was Far and Away: How Travel Can Change the World, a collection of his international reporting, and he has also more recently published an Audible Original called New Family Values that explores how the concept of family in America today has utterly changed, though the economic and legal structures lag behind.