On June 24, an eager audience filled Alumni Hall to hear from esteemed guest speaker, investigative journalist and bestselling author Patrick Radden Keefe. Keefe opened the evening by sharing the rather specific career goal he developed as a teenager: to write for The New Yorker.
He admitted that he was rejected by the publication in 1998 and then proceeded to pitch to its editorial staff for seven years—until one of his stories was finally accepted in 2005, while he was at Yale Law School.
“If there are any young, aspiring journalists in the room this evening, I would say law school was neither the most direct nor the cheapest route to a career in journalism,” said Keefe. This garnered a laugh from the audience. Yet it’s clear that Keefe’s passion for reading legal documents has shaped his storytelling style into one defined by empathy, gratitude, a relentless pursuit of truth and a remarkable ability to transform dense information into captivating narratives.
Known for his gripping stories in The New Yorker and acclaimed books including Say Nothing, Empire of Pain and Rogues, Keefe explores the darker corners of society: political scandals, corporate corruption and unsolved crimes, with meticulous research, emotional depth and narrative flair.
Say Nothing, which won the Orwell Prize and became a 2024 limited television series, unravels the Troubles in Northern Ireland through the story of a missing mother and two IRA sisters. Empire of Pain earned the Baillie Gifford Prize for Keefe’s unwavering investigation into the Sackler family. His storytelling also extends to audio with his podcast Wind of Change.
One of the hardest parts of his writing, Keefe said, is taking his immense research and turning it into a story that’s not just interesting to experts but also grabs the attention of people who don’t know much about the topic. Keefe spoke about the difficult and sometimes tension-fraught experience of researching and writing Empire of Pain. “I wrote this big book about the Sackler family, who made Oxycontin and became billionaires in the process. Kind of a big, grand sweeping biography of three generations of this family… but none of them spoke to me.”
Without the participation of the Sacklers, Keefe had to dig deep to find sources, one of whom was a yoga instructor the family had taken to Turks and Caicos. When worried about this source’s identity, she reassured him that “a yoga instructor they took to Turks and Caicos” wouldn’t narrow it down.
In an active Q&A, Keefe was asked how he gets people “in the chair,” and answered that tenacity is the name of the game. He described his approach: you go to the front door, then the back door, next you knock on the window. If nobody answers, you jimmy the window and if that doesn’t work, break through the window.
“You spend so much time talking to people who are deeply affected by the violence inflicted on them,” said Dr. Gillian Turnbull, Director of Writing & Publishing and the evening’s moderator. “When your heart is broken, does it paralyze you at any point? Does it make you want to give up?” She added that, in her position, her heart would break.
“My heart breaks, but I think in a good way,” Keefe answered. He explained that it’s the raw, visceral emotion that keeps him connected to his subject, adding that he wrote Empire of Pain while in a “white-hot fury.”
For another story, Keefe spoke about how it felt to be invited into a family’s home as they recounted one child killing another. He shared how when he listens to his subjects he must suspend judgment, but when it comes time to write he needs to be guided by his North Star: the truth.
As a second-year MFA student, Keefe’s lecture, organized by the Writing & Publishing MFA programs, Facilities Management Director Ian Wagschal and Facilities Management Officer Allison Rowsell, has given me a series of gifts: a set of sharpened writing tools for my toolbox and a blueprint for my own North Star. Keefe’s success comes from pursuing truth, following his dreams, embracing rejection, and putting his heart into his writing. For me—and I suspect many other readers—it is the generosity of Keefe’s storytelling, the way he writes with empathy and complexity, that lingers long after the story ends.
Photos by Paul Adams
