Author Tricia Romano joins Storyboard editor Mark Armstrong to talk about how she reported and wrote her oral history of The Village Voice, “The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture.”

Romano was a writer for the legendary New York City alt-weekly, and it was a Voice reunion in 2017, following the death of former Voice staffers Nat Hentoff and Wayne Barrett, that led her to take on the project.

Romano talks about her process for staying organized during the project, how she supplemented her book advance with grants to help fund it, and how to determine whether an oral history is the right path for your book or story idea.

Romano, who's also a Storyboard contributor, began her eight-year career at the Village Voice as an intern. As a contributing writer, she wrote features and award-winning cover stories about culture and music. Her reported column, Fly Life, gave a glimpse into the underbelly of New York nightlife. She has been a staff writer at the Seattle Times and served as the editor in chief of the Stranger, Seattle’s alternative newsweekly. A fellow at MacDowell, Ucross, and Millay artist residencies, and her work has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Daily Beast, Men’s Journal, Elle, Alta Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.

Get the full show notes and reading list from this episode:

https://niemanstoryboard.org/2026/02/19/tricia-romano-how-to-write-an-oral-history/

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Show Credits

Hosted and produced by Mark Armstrong
Episode editor: Kelly Araja
Audience editor: Adriana Lacy
Promotional support: Ellen Tuttle
Operational support: Paul Plutnicki, Peter Canova

Nieman Foundation interim curator: Henry Chu
Music: “Golden Grass,” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue)
Cover design by Adriana Lacy

Nieman Storyboard is presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.