Daniel M. Lavery (born Mallory Ortberg, November 28, 1986) is an American author and editor. He is known for having co-founded the website '' The Toast'', and written the books ''Texts from Jane Eyre'' (2014), ''The Merry Spinster'' (2018), and ''

Something That May Shock and Discredit You ''Something That May Shock and Discredit You'' is a memoir by the American writer Daniel M. Lavery in the form of a series of essays. It was published on February 11, 2020, by Atria Publishing Group. The book explores topics including gender an ...

'' (2020). He wrote ''Slate'''s "

Dear Prudence "Dear Prudence" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 double album ''The Beatles'' (also known as "the White Album"). The song was written by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. Written in R ...

" advice column from 2016 to 2021. As of 2022, he hosts a podcast on Slate titled ''Big Mood, Little Mood''. In 2017, he started a paid e-mail newsletter on Substack titled ''Shatner Chatner'', renamed to ''The Chatner'' in 2021.

Early life

Born Mallory Ortberg, Lavery grew up in northern Illinois and then San Francisco, one of three children of the evangelical Christian author and former

Menlo Church Menlo Church, previously Menlo Park Presbyterian Church (or MPPC), is a congregation located in the San Francisco Bay Area, California with campuses in Menlo Park, Mountain View, San Mateo, Saratoga, and San Jose. It was officially organized on No ...

pastor John Ortberg and Nancy Ortberg, who is also a pastor and the CEO of Transforming the Bay with Christ. He attended

Azusa Pacific University Azusa Pacific University (APU) is a private, evangelical Christian university in Azusa, California. The university was founded in 1899, with classes opening on March 3, 1900, in Whittier, California, and began offering degrees in 1939. The uni ...

, a private, evangelical Christian university in California. While a student, Lavery appeared on '' Jeopardy!'', Show #5816 of Monday, December 21, 2009, and finished in third place.

Writing

Influences

Lavery has credited the work of Shirley Jackson and her novel ''

We Have Always Lived in the Castle ''We Have Always Lived in the Castle'' is a 1962 mystery novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was Jackson's final work, and was published with a dedication to Pascal Covici, the publisher, three years before the author's death in 1965. Th ...

'', in particular, and John Bunyan's '' The Pilgrim's Progress'' as influential.

Career overview

Lavery wrote for ''

Gawker ''Gawker'' is an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers and based in New York City focusing on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in ...

'' and ''

The Hairpin ''The Hairpin'' was a women's website in The Awl network. It was founded in 2010 by Edith Zimmerman. It ceased publication at the end of January 2018. From 2013 to 2014, ''The Hairpin'' was edited by Emma Carmichael, with Jia Tolentino as contri ...

''. Through this work he met Nicole Cliffe, with whom he operated '' The Toast'', a feminist general interest web site, from July 2013 to July 2016. He was included in the 2015 '' Forbes'' "30 under 30" list in the media category. On November 9, 2015,

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

announced he would take over the magazine's "

" advice column from Emily Yoffe. He stopped writing the column in May 2021. In 2017, he launched ''Shatner Chatner'', a paid e-mail newsletter on Substack. On May 19, 2021, Lavery accepted a Substack Pro deal and shortened the newsletter's name to ''The Chatner''.

Books

''Texts from Jane Eyre''

Lavery's first book, ''Texts from Jane Eyre'', was released in November 2014 and became a ''New York Times'' bestseller. The book was based on a column he wrote first at ''The Hairpin'', then continued at ''The Toast'', which imagines well-known literary characters exchanging text messages. The premise was inspired by a comments section thread on a piece Cliffe had written for The Awl; on Cliffe's review of '' Gone With the Wind'', a commenter wrote that their experience in the South was nearly identical to the novel "except everybody has cellphones". This prompted him to imagine how Scarlett O'Hara might have used a cell phone.

''Rick and Morty Presents: Krombopulos Michael''

Lavery's first comic

one-shot One shot may refer to: Film and television * One-shot film, a feature film shot in one long take with no edits, or manufactured to look like so * ''One Shot'' (2005 film), a Sri Lankan action film directed by Ranjan Ramanayake * ''One Shot'' (2 ...

, entitled '' Rick and Morty Presents: Krombopulos Michael'', was published by Oni Press on June 20, 2018, following the '' Rick and Morty''

character Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...

of the same name.

''The Merry Spinster''

A short story collection, ''The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror'' (

Henry Holt Henry Holt may refer to: *Henry Holt (North Dakota politician) (1887–1944), lieutenant governor *Henry Holt (publisher) (1840–1926), American publisher and author **Henry Holt and Company, Holt's publishing company *Henry E. Holt (born 1929), ...

, 2018), appeared in 2018. The book, his second release, was highly anticipated, with '' Publishers Weekly'', ''Bustle'', The A.V. Club and ''InStyle Australia'' included in their lists of forthcoming titles in 2018. ''The Merry Spinster'' reinvents fairy tales such as '' Cinderella'' and '' Beauty and the Beast''; in the '' Los Angeles Times'', Agatha French described his renderings as making the "stories both weirder and yet somehow more familiar".

''Something That May Shock and Discredit You''

Lavery's third book, a memoir entitled ''

'', was published in February 2020 by Simon & Schuster. It was originally published as individual essays.

Personal life

Lavery identifies as

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

. In February 2018, he spoke to Autostraddle about the process of

gender transitioning Gender transition is the process of changing one's gender presentation or sex characteristics to accord with one's internal sense of gender identity – the idea of what it means to be a man or a woman,Brown, M. L. & Rounsley, C. A. (1996) ''True ...

while writing ''The Merry Spinster''. In March 2018, he was interviewed by

Heather Havrilesky Heather Havrilesky (born April 1970)is an American author, essayist, and humorist. She writes the advice column "Ask Polly" for ''Substack''. She is the author of ''Disaster Preparedness: A Memoir'', the advice book ''How to Be a Person in the Wor ...

in ''

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

'' magazine's ''The Cut'' about coming out as trans. In November 2018, he and partner Grace Lavery, an associate professor of English at UC Berkeley and "the most followed transgender scholar in the world on social media" including Twitter and Instagram, announced their intention to marry. They were married on December 22, 2019.

References

External links

Contributions on The Toast''Texts from Jane Eyre''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lavery, Daniel M. 1986 births American advice columnists American bloggers Transgender writers Transgender men Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Slate (magazine) people 21st-century American non-fiction writers LGBT people from Illinois American LGBT writers American satirists Azusa Pacific University alumni Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area 21st-century LGBT people