About

Stephan Talty Stephan Talty was born in Buffalo, New York to parents who’d emigrated from County Clare, Ireland. He went to Bishop Timon High School before attending Amherst College, where he graduated with a degree in English. After Amherst, he worked at the Miami Herald as a news clerk and police reporter, then became a freelance writer in Dublin and New York. He’s written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Playboy, the Irish Times, the Chicago Review and many other publications.

Talty is the author of five non-fiction books: Mulatto America, about the mixing of black and white culture throughout American History; Empire of Blue Water, the story of the great pirate captain Henry Morgan; The Illustrious Dead, about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and the typhus epidemic that doomed it; Escape from the Land of Snows, an account of the Dalai Lama’s escape from Tibet in 1959; and Agent Garbo, the story of the greatest double agent of World War II, Juan Pujol.

His first work of fiction, a crime novel called Black Irish, introduces the Harvard-educated detective, Absalom Kearney, and marks the beginning of a new crime series. He is also the co-author of the New York Times bestselling account, A Captain’s Duty, with Captain Richard Phillips, the hero of the Maersk Alabama hijacking. The book is being made into a film starring Tom Hanks, to be released in late 2013.

Talty now lives outside New York City with his wife and two children.

A Talk with Stephan Talty