“Messages from Inner Space,” a Lecture by Adedotun Akintoye

A profile is an encounter witha stranger, or sometimes with a person many of us pretend we know. At its verybest, a profile wants to leave an impression of what it’s like to bethis other person—how they account for their lives, how they feel and think.This is a dubious project. One made even more difficult because the writer of literarynonfiction cannot pull the magic trick of the fiction writer. She cannot(securely) write of her subject: “he/she/they thought.” Yet, writers of greatliterary nonfiction do not leave their readers feeling locked out of theircharacters’ interiority. How do they reach this inner space to which they cannotbut must travel? And what tactics—exegesis, ekphrasis, rhetorical sleightof hand—do they use to get there?

Dotun Akintoye is a Staff Writer at ESPN. He is aformer fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, and afinalist for the National Magazine Award in profile writing. He lives in NewYork, for now.

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