What's Up?
David Kirby spent considerable time rubbing elbows with the social elites who comprise the world of “Upper East Bride.” As Press Secretary at the American Foundation for AIDS Research, he accompanied Elizabeth Taylor around the globe, mixing with movie stars, TV celebrities, royalty and other very rich people, most of whom were quite nice. He has written for The NY Times, Huffington Post, UPI, Discover, Glamour and others, and published four nonfiction books with St. Martin’s Press. UPPER EAST BRIDE is his first novel. He lives in NYC (of course).
Life & Work
Bio:
David Kirby is an investigative journalist and author who was a regular contributor to The New York Times, Huffington Post and TakePart, where he covered health, science, politics, the environment, green technology, art and culture. In the 1980s he was a wire-service correspondent covering the wars in Central America and political unrest in Mexico.
He has also published four non-fiction books: “Evidence of Harm,” (a NY Times bestseller, winner of the 2005 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for Best Book and one of five finalists for the 2005 Helen Bernstein New York Public Library Award for Excellence in Nonfiction), “Animal Factory,” “Death at Seaworld” and “When They Come For You.” In 2015, he won the Southern California Journalists Association’s award for Best Environmental Reporting. His article for Discover Magazine about toxic pollution crossing the ocean from China was selected as one of the 20 of the year in the book “Best American Science And Nature Writing -2012.” He has also contributed to a number of other major magazines.
David has extensive experience in public speaking on a variety of topics at major venues and has been interviewed by or made appearances at venues such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Associated Press, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR and many others.
Publications:
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF “DEATH AT SEAWORLD,” OPTIONED FOR A MAJOR 10-PART NETWORK SERIES.
Love, Life and Loss in the Upper Stratosphere of High Society New York. A comedy.
Megan O’Malley is a working-class, aspiring journalist from Ypsilanti who moves to New York City and is unexpectedly hurled into the madness of uber-rich Manhattan, with its competitive consumption, preposterous pretensions, massive financial fiefdoms, and the over-indulged wealthy, whose hordes of help keep the silver polished, the chateaubriand perfectly cooked and the martinis exquisitely dry.
Megan is soon swept off her feet by the city’s most celebrated wealthy bachelor, Rexford Bainbridge, III, better known as “Sexy Rexy.” When he proposes to her, Rex’s stunned circle of friends, a cabal of Type-A socialites, reluctantly agree to take the decidedly down-market Midwesterner under their comically pompous wings and guide her through a massive makeover.
As Megan pursues her dream of journalism, she must navigate a brave new life of ridiculous opulence, relentless snobbery and stinging ridicule, mostly directed at her. When everything comes crashing down, she is shunned by the ladies who lunch. Megan must now claw her way back to respectability and financial stability, while also delivering a fitting comeuppance to her mentors-turned-tormentors. This rags-to-riches-to-rags social satire unearths the dark, hilarious underbelly of class warfare in contemporary Manhattan.
Recommendations
Recommend David Kirby in order to appear here. Click on the grey crosses visible when logged in:
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).