Margaret Talbot is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century (Riverhead, 2012).

With her brother David Talbot, she co-authored By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution (HarperCollins, 2021).

She has also written for The New Republic, where she was formerly executive editor, and The New York Times Magazine, among other places, and was a founding editor of Lingua Franca: The Review of Academic Life. She is a recipient of a Whiting Award and a New America Foundation Fellowship.

Margaret grew up in Studio City, California, attended North Hollywood High School, graduated from UC Berkeley, where she learned a lot about journalism as the editor of The Daily Californian, and then indulged a love of history and archival research by studying for a PhD in Modern European History at Harvard, which she took a very long time not getting. (She did read some excellent books along the way.)

She is married to journalist Arthur Allen, lives in Washington, DC, and is the mother of Ike and Lucy.

Margaret is represented by the Wylie Agency. Her agents are Sarah Chalfant: SChalfant@wylieagency.com and Jacqueline Ko: jko@wyliegancy.com.

Contact: margaret_talbot@newyorker.com.