Daniel M. Lavery | |
---|---|
Born | November 28, 1986 |
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | American |
Education | Azusa Pacific University |
Period | 21st century |
Genre | Satire Short fiction Advice |
Notable works | The Toast Texts from Jane Eyre The Merry Spinster Something That May Shock and Discredit You Krombopulos Michael |
Spouse | Grace Lavery |
Relatives | John Ortberg (father) |
Website | |
thechatner |
Daniel M. Lavery [1] [2] (born Mallory Ortberg, [3] November 28, 1986) [4] 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 (2020). He wrote Slate's "Dear Prudence" advice column from 2016 to 2021. From 2022-2023, he hosted a podcast on Slate titled Big Mood, Little Mood. In 2017, he started a paid e-mail newsletter on Substack titled Shatner Chatner, [5] [6] renamed to The Chatner in 2021. [7]
Born Mallory Ortberg, Lavery grew up in northern Illinois and then San Francisco, [3] one of three children of the evangelical Christian author and former Menlo Church pastor John Ortberg and Nancy Ortberg, who is also a pastor and the CEO of Transforming the Bay with Christ. [8] [9] He attended Azusa Pacific University, [10] 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. [11] [12]
Lavery has credited the work of Shirley Jackson and her novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle , in particular, and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress as influential. [13]
Lavery wrote for Gawker and The Hairpin . [14] [15] Through this work he met Nicole Cliffe, with whom he operated The Toast , a feminist general interest web site, [16] from July 2013 to July 2016. [8]
He was included in the 2015 Forbes "30 under 30" list in the media category. [17] On November 9, 2015, Slate announced he would take over the magazine's "Dear Prudence" advice column from Emily Yoffe. [18] He stopped writing the column in May 2021. [19]
In 2017, he launched Shatner Chatner, a paid e-mail newsletter on Substack. [5] [6] On May 19, 2021, Lavery accepted a Substack Pro deal and shortened the newsletter's name to The Chatner. [7]
Lavery's first book, Texts from Jane Eyre, was released in November 2014 [20] [21] and became a New York Times bestseller. [22] The book was based on a column he wrote first at The Hairpin, then continued at The Toast, [14] 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 commentator wrote that his or her experience in the South was nearly identical to the novel "except everybody has cell phones". This prompted him to imagine how Scarlett O'Hara might have used a cell phone. [23]
Lavery's first comic one-shot, entitled Rick and Morty Presents: Krombopulos Michael , was published by Oni Press on June 20, 2018, following the Rick and Morty character of the same name. [24]
A short story collection, The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror (Henry Holt, 2018), appeared in 2018. [25] [26] 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. [27] [28] [29] [30] 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". [13]
Lavery's third book, a memoir entitled Something That May Shock and Discredit You , was published in February 2020 by Simon & Schuster. [31] It was originally published as individual essays. [32]
Lavery identifies as queer. [8] In February 2018, he spoke to Autostraddle about the process of gender transitioning while writing The Merry Spinster. [33] In March 2018, he was interviewed by Heather Havrilesky in New York magazine's The Cut about coming out as transgender. [34]
In November 2018, he and his girlfriend Grace Lavery, an associate professor of English at U.C. Berkeley [35] [36] and "the most followed transgender scholar in the world on social media" including Twitter and Instagram, [37] announced their intention to marry. [38] They were married on December 22, 2019. [39] [40]
James Tiberius Kirk, commonly known as James T. Kirk or Captain Kirk, is a fictional character in the Star Trek media franchise. Originally played by Canadian actor William Shatner, Kirk first appeared in Star Trek serving aboard the starship USS Enterprise as captain. Kirk leads his crew as they explore new worlds, new civilizations, and "boldly go where no man has gone before". Often, the characters of Spock and Leonard "Bones" McCoy act as his logical and emotional sounding boards, respectively. Kirk has also been portrayed in numerous films, books, comics, webisodes, and video games.
Jodie Lee Ann Sweetin is an American actress and television personality. She is best known for her role as Stephanie Tanner in the ABC comedy series Full House and its Netflix sequel series Fuller House.
Christopher Allen Lloyd is an American actor. He has appeared in many theater productions, films, and on television since the 1960s. He is known for portraying Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990) and Jim Ignatowski in the comedy series Taxi (1978–1983), for which he won two Emmy Awards.
Dear Prudence is an advice column appearing several times weekly in the online magazine Slate and syndicated to over 200 newspapers.
Daniel James Harmon is an American screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the creator and producer of the NBC and Yahoo! Screen sitcom Community (2009–2015), creator and host of the comedy podcast Harmontown (2012–2019), co-creator of the Adult Swim animated sitcom Rick and Morty (2013–present) and its subsequent franchise along with Justin Roiland, and co-founder of the alternative television network and website Channel 101 along with Rob Schrab.
John Ortberg Jr. is an American evangelical Christian author, speaker, and the former senior pastor of Menlo Church in Menlo Park, California, an ECO Presbyterian church with more than 4,000 members. Ortberg has published many books including the 2008 ECPA Christian Book Award winner When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, and the 2002 Christianity Today Book Award winner If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat. Another of his publications, The Life You've Always Wanted, has sold more than 500,000 copies as of 2008. On August 13, 2012, Ortberg's book Who Is This Man? debuted at #3 on the New Release chart at Amazon.com.
William Shatner is a Canadian actor. In a career spanning seven decades, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise, from his 1966 debut as the captain of the starship Enterprise in the second pilot of the first Star Trek television series to his final appearance as Captain Kirk in the seventh Star Trek feature film, Star Trek Generations (1994).
Mark Justin Roiland is an American voice actor, animator, writer, producer, and director. He is best known as the co-creator of Adult Swim's animated sitcom Rick and Morty, for which he voiced the protagonists Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith from 2013–2022, and as the co-creator of Hulu's Solar Opposites, in which he formerly voiced the main character, Korvo, until both networks severed ties with him in 2023. He had also voiced Earl of Lemongrab in Adventure Time, Blendin Blandin in Gravity Falls, and Oscar in Fish Hooks. He founded the animation studio Justin Roiland's Solo Vanity Card Productions! and the video game studio Squanch Games, though he resigned from the latter in 2023.
Caolan Owen Lavery is a professional footballer who plays as a forward for Doncaster Rovers.
William Shatner is a Canadian actor who has had a career in film and television for seven decades. Shatner's breakthrough role was his portrayal of James T. Kirk in Star Trek.
Rick and Morty is an American adult animated science fiction sitcom created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon for Cartoon Network's nighttime programming block Adult Swim. The series follows the misadventures of Rick Sanchez, a cynical mad scientist, and his good-hearted but fretful grandson Morty Smith, who split their time between domestic life and interdimensional adventures that take place across an infinite number of realities, often traveling to other planets and dimensions through portals and on Rick's flying saucer. The general concept of Rick and Morty relies on two conflicting scenarios: domestic family drama and a misanthropic grandfather dragging his grandson into hijinks.
Jaeden Martell is an American actor. He played the role of Bill Denbrough in the 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King's novel It and reprised the role in the film's 2019 sequel. He also appeared in the mystery film Knives Out (2019) and starred in the miniseries Defending Jacob (2020).
Nicole Cliffe is a Canadian writer living in Utah, who co-founded and co-edited the website The Toast with Daniel Lavery.
The Toast was an American anthology, humor and feminist writing website, founded by editors Nicole Cliffe and Daniel M. Lavery and publisher Nicholas Pavich. It was active from January 2013 through July 2016.
Molly Knox Ostertag is an American cartoonist and writer. Her work includes the animated series The Owl House, webcomic Strong Female Protagonist, the middle grade graphic novel series, and on the series Tales of the Night Watchman. She was named one of Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30 in 2021.
Nicole Chung is an American writer and editor. She is the former managing editor of The Toast, the editor-in-chief of Catapult magazine, and the author of the memoirs All You Can Ever Know (2018) and ALiving Remedy (2023).
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.
Rick and Morty is an American animated science-fiction comedy franchise, whose eponymous duo consists of Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith. Rick and Morty were created by cartoonist Justin Roiland for a 2006 parody film of Back to the Future for Channel 101, a short film festival co-founded by Dan Harmon. After six years, the sketch was developed into Rick and Morty, a half-hour prime time show that was a hit for Adult Swim, receiving universal acclaim across all seasons. Alongside the original television series, the characters of the show have been featured in a variety of media, including spin-offs, comic books, musical releases and video games. The show has earned hundreds of millions of dollars in income across their merchandising and media franchise.
Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a memoir, arranged in the form of a series of essays, by the American writer Daniel M. Lavery. It was published on February 11, 2020, by Atria Publishing Group. The book explores topics including gender and gender transition as well as popular culture and theology.