Michael Lista on writing true crime, and getting optioned
Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet who lives in Toronto. I\u2019ve followed his career now for some fifteen years. He\u2019s written true crime for the better part of a decade. His story \u201cThe Sting\u201d is being adapted by Adam Perlman, Robert Downey Jr., and Team Downey, into a television series for Apple TV+.
We talk here about Michael\u2019s recent book of true crime stories, The Human Scale; about Truman Capote and the non-fiction novel; about listening and details; being honest when talking with people who\u2019ve experienced crises, and how tawdry it is to ask for exclusivity; about examining systems, and how tardy the delivery of justice can sometimes be; about how the story resides in the telling, and how Shakespeare stuck his landings; about in extremis and understanding who we really are; fact-checked fairy tales; competing against YouTube and Netflix; and much more.