Daniel M. Lavery is an American author and editor. He is known for having co-founded the website The Toast, and written the books Texts from Jane Eyre, The Merry Spinster, and Something That May Shock and Discredit You. He currently hosts Slate's "Dear Prudence" advice column and podcast. Lavery is a transgender man who transitioned in 2018.
Early life
Lavery grew up in northern Illinois and then San Francisco, one of three children of the evangelical Christian author and Menlo Church pastor John Ortberg and Nancy Ortberg, who is also a pastor and the CEO of Transforming the Bay with Christ. He attended Azusa Pacific University, a private, evangelical Christian university in California. While a student, Lavery appeared on Jeopardy!, Show #5816 of Monday, December 21, 2009, and finished in third place.
Career
Lavery wrote for Gawker and The Hairpin. Through this work he met Nicole Cliffe, with whom he operated The Toast, a feminist general interest web site, from July 2013 to July 2016. He was included in the 2015 Forbes "30 under 30" list in the media category. On November 9, 2015, Slate announced he would take over the magazine's "Dear Prudence" advice column from Emily Yoffe. In 2017, he launched a paid subscription email newsletter called the Shatner Chatner.
Books
Lavery has cited Shirley Jackson, particularly We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan as writing influences.
''Texts from Jane Eyre''
Lavery's first book, Texts from Jane Eyre, was released in November 2014 and became a New York Times bestseller. The book was based on a column he wrote first at The Hairpin, then continued at The Toast, which imagines famous literary characters exchanging anachronistic text messages. The premise was inspired by a comments-section thread on a piece Cliffe had written for The Awl; on Cliffe's review of Gone With the Wind, a commenter wrote that their experience in the South was nearly identical to the novel "except everybody has cellphones", prompting him to imagine how Scarlett O'Hara might have used a cell phone.
''The Merry Spinster''
Lavery is also the author of the short story collection The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror. The book, his second release, was highly anticipated, with Publishers Weekly, Bustle, The A.V. Club and InStyle Australia all naming it to lists of best forthcoming titles in 2018. The Merry Spinster reinvents archetypal fairy tales like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast; in the Los Angeles Times, Agatha French described his renderings as making the "stories both weirder and yet somehow more familiar".
''Something That May Shock and Discredit You''
Lavery's third book, Something That May Shock and Discredit You, was published in February 2020 by Simon & Schuster.
