Amanda Stern

Amanda Stern's work has appeared in the New York Times; the New York Times Magazine; the New York Times Book Review; Filmmaker, The Believer, Salon.com, Blackbook, St. Ann’s Review, Post Road and The Mid, among others. Her personal essays have been included in several anthologies: Love is a Four Letter Word , The Marijuana Chronicles, Women in Clothes and her Believer interview with Laurie Anderson was included in Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence: The Best of the Believer Music Interviews, 2014.

Her first novel The Long Haul (Soft Skull Press) was published in 2003. Of her metaphors, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “they’re so fresh, they’re almost jarring.” That made her really happy, and relieved, because she’d been worried she’d over-similied and under-metaphored. Concurrent with the publication of The Long Haul, she launched The Happy Ending Music and Reading Series as an antidote to boredom. The series, designed around public risks, became a critical success, and its inventive model paved the way for the proliferation of music and reading series created in its wake. Happy Ending had permanent homes at Joe’s Pub in NYC and Symphony Space. In 2016, she ended the series with two final shows in Israel with Etgar Keret, Colum McCann and Gary Shteyngart. Amanda produced over 250 shows and has welcomed over 700 creative artists, ranging from Lena Dunham to Laurie Anderson.

She spent her 20s working in film–for Ang Lee, Terry Gilliam and Gregg Araki, but primarily for Ted Hope and James Schamus at the famed (and not forgotten) Good Machine, where she worked closely with Hal Hartley. After that she became an accidental comic, co-hosting the Lorne Michaels series, “This is Not a Test“ with host Marc Maron at “Catch A Rising Star.” She was the on-air host of a cable network owned by Lorne Michaels, the name of which is so mortifying she can’t even bring herself to tell me, the fake person pretending to write “her” bio. Later, in the music world, she worked for David Byrne, curating a narrative section of The Talking Heads Box Set, “Once In A Lifetime.”

Stern hosts, talks, moderates and curates for those who pay her. Some of these people and places are: the National Book Awards ceremony, “5 Under 35;” the BBC; Soundcheck; the MacDowell Colony; Brooklyn Public Library’s Gala with Paul Auster and at Powerhouse Arena. She’s also led storytelling workshops for Moleskine, Cirque du Soleil and Proctor & Gamble.

She’s published twelve novels, nine for children, two for young adults and one novel of literary fiction, The Long Haul. She’s held several fellowships at both The MacDowell Colony (once as the Philip Morris Company Fellow) and at Yaddo. In 2012 she was a NYFA fiction fellow, and she was a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick in 2018 for her memoir, Little Panic.