Twenty-One Questions With Susan Dominus

The New York Times staff writer and author of the forthcoming book The Family Dynamic talks writing, social media, and the life-changing magic of rotating your sneakers.

Few joys in life rival the discovery of a writer whose work doesn’t just speak to you but sings. It’s an even better sort of thrill when that writer has a back catalog big enough for you to get lost in. Lately, I’ve been getting lost — willingly, happily — in the work of Susan Dominus.

I am a sucker for longform journalism, and Susan is one of the genre’s best practitioners. A longtime staffer at the New York Times, she was part of the team that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for reporting on sexual harassment in the American workplace. Her 2023 story in the New York Times Magazine, “Women Have Been Misled About Menopause,” won a National Magazine Award. And an article she wrote last year, “Is That Drink Worth It to You?,” was so good that we broke format on The Next Big Idea, a podcast where we usually interview authors about books, and had her on the show. Susan is such a luminary that a few years ago Yale, her alma mater, tapped her to take over Bob Woodward’s famed “Journalism” seminar — and I must say, with all due respect to Bob, I’d rather take her class.

Next week, she’ll publish a new book — her first — called The Family Dynamic. It’s about those families where the kids all grow up to be remarkably successful. Susan spent years getting to know some of them, looking for parenting techniques and life lessons. The result, says Adam Grant, is “a delicious smorgasbord of rich stories and rigorous social science.”¹

“I thought I wrote a book about high-achieving families,” Susan told us recently when she made her second appearance on The Next Big Idea, “but when I look back, it’s really a book about families who did believe that the sky’s the limit.” You should absolutely pre-order it on Amazon or Bookshop.

We asked Susan to be the inaugural respondent to the Author Insider Questionnaire, our writer-centric riff on Vanity Fair’s “Proust Questionnaire” or the New York Times’ “By the Book” feature. Her answers are smart, funny, surprising, and insightful; I would expect nothing less from one of my new favorite writers.

—Caleb

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Twenty-One Questions With Susan Dominus

1/ I couldn’t have written my last book without… the occasional 3 a.m. sleep-inducing Benadryl.

2/ What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer? That we have any idea where our best metaphors come from — they just occasionally grace you with their presence, and then you write them down.

3/ What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago? Rotating my sneakers.

4/ Hemingway wrote standing up; Edith Wharton, lying down. What are your quirks? I love a lounge on the couch when I’m working. Then I feel like I’m relaxing, not working, even if I’m on an urgent deadline.

5/ Do you read your reviews? There really are people who don’t?

6/ Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs. I would marry them all, and then re-up my vows every few years. In theory, that is. I don’t think I could pull off a full-time job and also write a newsletter.

7/ Is there a book you wish you’d written? Whenever I read the fiction writer Katie Kitimura, I think that — maybe because she also makes it look so easy, even as her books are such carefully constructed pieces of elegant engineering.

8/ What keeps you up at night? Fear of a mistake that’s already gone to press.

9/ Have any tech tools made your job easier? Thank you, Voice Memo app, for transcribing so beautifully right there on the app.

10/ How do you keep track of new ideas? I send myself an email that says, “Idea to follow up on.” I know there has to be a better way. Occasionally, I remember to search for that in my emails.

11/ What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received? Start out as an editor, learn the business, and then when you want to be a writer, you’ll have rich contacts wherever you worked. That’s exactly how it worked for me. RIP, Judy Daniels, my first boss, who recently came to me in a dream — I think she was happy I’d finally written a book. Or that her advice worked just as she said it would.

12/ And the worst? Whatever you do, don’t move to the suburbs.

13/ Whose career do you most admire and why? Laura Rubino. She was one of my children’s kindergarten teachers. No one in our small town is more appreciated or sought after. Someone who makes school a joy for a small child is a hero to me.

14/ Coffee, tea, or something stronger? Something weaker — I only drink decaf, even in the morning now. My husband and I fight a lot less these days.

15/ How are you using social media to grow your audience? Thank you, Rachel Sklar, a friend who took over my Instagram feed, gave it wit and aesthetics, and taught me how to go from there.

16/ How many drafts before you show your editor? My poor editors — not enough.

17/ Can you describe your ideal workday? Exercise from 6 to 7, sit down for coffee in my workout gear, get absorbed in writing a draft of something I ideally love, look up and it’s 3:00 — then it’s wind-down time, catching up on emails, calling people back. Making dinner by 5:30 or 6.

18/ How does that compare to your actual workday? When I have too much to do, I sit down at 5:30 and never get the workout in. Other than that — it’s pretty close! Except that I don’t always love the draft.

19/ What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out? If you feel conflicted about an ethical call you need to make, you already have your answer. No need to agonize.

20/ In five years, successful authors will all be… still struggling to find a way to balance the work with whatever new promotional opportunities emerge!

21/ What is your new book about? The Family Dynamic: A Journey Inside the Mystery of Sibling Success is about families of high-achieving siblings — it’s not a how-to, but an in-depth exploration of the ways that parenting, sibling relationships, and luck (genetic and otherwise) can create a culture of dreaming big and succeeding.

P.S.

Those of you based in New York City can catch Susan in conversation with Emily Nussbaum on May 8 at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn. (There will be wine!) She’ll also be onstage at 92NY on May 19 with Taffy Brodesser-Akner and two of the subjects of The Family Dynamic, sisters Lauren Groff (celebrated novelist) and Sarah True (two-time Olympian).

1. Susan deserves some credit for Adam Grant’s emergence on the national stage: she wrote the first major profile of Adam and his work in 2013, shortly before the release of his first book, Give and Take.