Benoit Denizet-Lewis is a Contributing Writer at The New York Times Magazine, where he writes about American culture. Formerly a senior writer at Boston Magazine and staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, Benoit has also written for Details, ESPN the Magazine, Spin, Out, Salon, JANE, and others.  A 1997 graduate of Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Benoit was the 2004 recipient of an Alicia Patterson Fellowship. In April of 2006, he was a visiting writer at the University of Oregon’s Literary Nonfiction program, leading an intensive workshop in Writing about Addiction. Many of his articles can be found on his website: www.benoitlewis.com

What motivated you to leave Boston Magazine and start on the freelance writer’s life? 

I loved Boston Magazine. I loved being part of a small staff that put out a great magazine, and I loved having the steady direction and guidance of the editors there. But after more than a year, I realized that I wasn’t being read by the people I was hoping would read me—mostly magazine editors in New York. My goal was always to write for the New York Times Magazine or the New Yorker, so after a year at Boston Magazine, I started pitching ideas to an editor at the New York Times Magazine. I thought my ideas were great (who doesn’t?), but in response I received a whole lot of polite rejections. The editor said she liked my work, but none of the stories were a perfect match for the magazine. Then, in the course of working on a freelance piece for Spin about kids coming out as gay in middle school, I stumbled upon the story of a transgendered middle school kid—biologically a girl—who was secretly living as a boy with the help of some teachers at the school. I realized that this was an incredible story, and when the teacher and the student agreed to participate, I pitched a profile of the boy to the New York Times Magazine. I figured that if they didn’t like that story, then I might as well give up!  But they did like the idea and assigned me the story. At that point I quit Boston Magazine and really threw myself completely into freelance writing. Freelancing can be hard, but I like the schedule. I like being able to walk my dog in the middle of the day, hang out, get up late in the morning. Basically, I like being able to be lazy when I feel like it. So it’s worked out pretty well.

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?  How much of your talent do you attribute to natural ability (and the hard work that goes along with it) and how much to the education you got at Medill?

I did know that I wanted to be a writer – my dad’s a writer… he has written books about natural breathing and meditation.  When I was young, I wanted to be a playwright or a sportswriter. It’s a weird combination, I know, but I loved plays, and I loved sports. Some of the best writers are sportswriters—some of the worst, too, but I focused on the great ones. I went to a very small private French-American school and started a school newspaper called the Exposer. It was basically a joke. Our masthead was a frog in a trench coat exposing himself.  I also wrote plays, mostly Harold Pinter and Beckett-like plays of two or three people trying to communicate, but generally being unable to do so. I was obsessed with dialogue—I still am, actually.

I went to Medill, but I never really was into writing straightforward news stories.  I wrote sports pieces for the Daily Northwestern, took classes that interested me (mostly sociology and theater classes), and skipped the ones that bored me. My junior year, I took a class in magazine writing that I really enjoyed.  It was the first time that anyone at Medill even stressed the idea that journalists should also be colorful and interesting writers.  At that point I wasn’t a very good writer, let-alone a colorful one, but it was nice to hear someone talking about great writing.  I’ve since realized that the problem with most journalism schools is that they focus so much on how to report, and not enough on how to write. 

Most of your work now is immersion journalism.  Which part of the process do you enjoy most – the immersion, the background research, or the actual writing of the story?

I really like all three but for different reasons. The background research sometimes feels tedious, but the more I get into it, the more I enjoy just sitting around and reading and learning as much as I can. I basically become pretty obsessed with learning as much as I can, although I have a terrible memory, so I think this process probably takes me longer than people who can read something once and actually remember what they read. The immersion part is wonderful, too.  I really feel alive when I’m doing it.  I always say that the best part of my job is that I get to go out into a subculture, parachute in, hang out, meet people I otherwise wouldn’t meet, ask questions, be with people, get into their lives --and people let me in -- in ways that are really profound and amazing.  I really enjoy getting to be a guest in someone’s life. The last part of the process, the actual writing, is both wonderful and horrible at the same time. Some people talk about having this incredible fear when they sit down at their computer and look at the blank screen, but to me, that’s the best part!  And the piece will usually start well, and I’ll say to myself, “Wow, this is going great!” But soon enough I’ll take some time away from the piece, come back and read it, and realize that it isn’t nearly as great as I thought it was. So then I’ll panic and realize that, lo and behold, this magazine writing deal is actually really hard, and so I’ll start re-writing and changing the structure.  So eventually—I’m a very, very slow writer—I’ll finish the piece, and I’ll feel great about it, and I’ll send it to my editor, and usually the response is,  “This is great, but …”  So that begins the rewriting process, which I hate, but which usually makes the piece a lot stronger in the end.  

You are a contributing writer for the NYTimes Magazine – what does that mean? 

It means that I’m on contract for a certain number of stories a year, I get paid a higher rate than a normal freelancer, and people at cocktail parties sometimes think I’m really cool.  But it’s funny, because plenty of people don’t believe me when I tell them that I’m a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine.  I guess I look younger than my age (30), so some people will look at me condescendingly and say , “Come on, now, what college newspaper do you really write for?”

Do they come to you with stories, or do you pitch your own? 

A little of both.  Sometimes I’ll pitch 3 ideas and they might like one of them.  Or they’ll come to me with ideas every once in a while.  I wish they did that more.  That’s the easiest, because if they thought of the idea, you don’t have to do any convincing.  Recently, I pitched them a story idea about addiction medicine, and they liked it, so I’m working on that now.  Now that I’m doing this book on addiction, a few of my stories that I’ll do as magazine pieces will be related to that topic.  But I’ll also want to do a piece or two that is non addiction related, just for a break.