Lauren Redniss on the Art of Dance

Lauren Redniss is the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant and the author of four remarkable works of visual nonfiction. These genre-defying books combine oral history, visual art, reportage, and archival research to create volumes that look a bit like graphic novels but read like nothing else you’ve ever experienced. Among them is Radioactive, a biography of the scientists Marie and Pierre Curie; Thunder and Lightning, a sprawling exploration of the weather; and Oak Flat, a work of original reportage about an Apache family trying to protect sacred land from a mining company in modern-day Arizona. Her newest project, a children’s book called Time Capsule, has just been released.   When invited to talk about one of her deepest influences, Lauren might have discussed an oral historian she admires, such as Studs Terkel, or a painter to whom she has been compared, such as Paul Klee. Instead, she proposed talking about an entire artistic medium, which she considers to be her greatest s...