I’ve been wanting to have Luc Sante on the show for some time now,

and a recently appearance at the Brooklyn Book Fair finally afforded the opportunity to sit down with the author. Immediately after a panel with Vivian Gornick and David Ulin on the topic of writing about cities, Sante and I sat down in a courtyard on a windy Sunday. Published the same year I moved to New York, the author’s book Low Life might well be my favorite book I’ve ever read about the city, peering into the crime dens and slums often whitewashed out of portraits of Gotham’s golden age. Sante was at the show promoting his most recent work, The Other Paris, which offers similar insight into the city of light. He happily agreed to discuss the two vastly different, yet eternally link metropolises, while giving candid look into what keeps him writing.