The interview starts where the biography stops
A useful conversation reaches beyond a list of achievements.
A biography can tell us where a person studied, the positions they held and the honours they received. It provides a starting point for an interview. The conversation becomes worthwhile when it asks what those experiences actually meant to the person who lived them.
There are questions a prepared interviewer can ask that a generic questionnaire cannot. What decision changed the direction of the work? When did confidence fail? Which early assumption turned out to be wrong? What would the person now tell someone beginning in the same field? Answers become more revealing when they are attached to particular events.
Preparation matters. An interviewer should read the book, examine the professional history or become familiar with the subject’s work before asking for a conversation. Follow-up questions should arise from what the person says. They should not be abandoned merely because the next prepared question is waiting.
The Continental welcomes suggestions for interviews with writers, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, athletes and other people whose experience can interest readers. This founding edition sets out the approach rather than inventing a conversation with a person who has not been interviewed.
Editorially selected interviews and commissioned sponsored profiles will be identified separately. In either case, quotations must come from the subject’s actual answers. The value of the feature will depend on the quality of the questions and the specificity of the response.