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W.M. Akers on Muck Rack

W.M. Akers

Philadelphia
As seen in: Strange Times, Medium, The New York Times, Kickstarter, VICE, Observer, Deadspin, HarperCollins Publishers, Narratively, IndieBound, Kirkus Reviews and
Covers:  theater, television, off off broadway, off broadway, broadway, indie theater, film, books
Writer. Met fan. Bi. @SqueakyBicycle playwright, author of WESTSIDE, creator of DEADBALL & COMRADES. Newsletter: strangetimes.substack.com @ouijum@jawns.club

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W.M. Akers’s Biography

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W.M. Akers is a native of Nashville, Tennessee who speaks, to his great disappointment, without an accent. In 2010 he graduated from NYU’s dramatic writing program, where he wrote four good plays, two bad ones, and received the John Golden Playwriting Prize In Excellence in recognition of his body of work, which was found to be much nicer than his actual body. In 2011, Sanguine Productions mounted a thrilling version of his play, Cary’s Chain Store Massacre, and in 2012, Squeaky Bicycle did the…

W.M. Akers’s Journalist Portfolio

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Everyone Here Can't Play This Game, or The Discreet Charm of the WBC | The Classical

Everyone Here Can't Play This Game, or The Discreet Charm of the WBC | The Classical

Spring Training is a tease. Baseball addicts survive winter's frosty void on a thin diet of trade rumors, "cl…

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A Cold Winter in Coney

A Cold Winter in Coney

Dick Zigun was ready for a two-foot flood. In three decades at Coney Island, every hurricane he had seen blew…

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For audiences with autism, Broadway musicals to last a lifetime | Narratively

For audiences with autism, Broadway musicals to last a lifetime | Narratively

For audiences with autism, Broadway's grandest theaters stage musicals to last a lifetime. At a matinee of th…

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After Newtown, the Comfort of a Broadsheet and Turner Classic Movies | Observer

After Newtown, the Comfort of a Broadsheet and Turner Classic Movies | Observer

It did not take long for me to turn off Twitter, to shut down Facebook, to ignore NYTimes.com. The Internet c…

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'We own the whole widget': Unbowed, Mike Daisey returns to Joe's Pub | Capital New York

'We own the whole widget': Unbowed, Mike Daisey returns to Joe's Pub | Capital New York

It's not usually nice to call someone a sponge, but Mike Daisey is an absorbent guy. He soaks up stories, bin…

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After the storm, New York's theaters face blackouts and empty houses | Capital New York

After the storm, New York's theaters face blackouts and empty houses | Capital New York

The temporary home of St. Ann's Warehouse is on Jay Street, nestled in the heart of Dumbo, just half a block …

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Articles

For These Detectives, Love Is the Greatest Mystery of All

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By W.M. Akers
| CrimeReads Verified
Picture a detective. I bet you’re imagining a haggard drunk sprawled across a Murphy bed, suit rumpled, wallet empty, address book full of clients who won’t pay and exes who hate their guts. Or maybe they’re a high-strung genius—think Nero Wolfe, Hercule Poirot, or Sherlock Holmes—whose brilliance has made it impossible to connect with other people. Either way, they probably don’t date.
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A Tale of Surviving an Arctic Winter Well Told

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By W.M. Akers
| RealClear History
In 1913, the Karluk, flagship of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, became trapped in the Arctic ice. Over months of constant darkness, the old ship drifted away from land, carrying a party of explorers, engineers and Inuit hunters toward near-certain death. With every mile, the ice squeezed harder. And the walls of the ship began to crack. “She creaked and groaned and, once or twice actually sobbed as the water oozed through her seams,” wrote the Karluk’s captain, Robert Bartlett.
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The Joy of Researching Historical Fiction

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By W.M. Akers
| CrimeReads Verified
On April 13, 1922, two homemade bombs exploded in a tenement on Eldridge Street, in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, destroying the building’s top half and rousing the sleeping neighborhood into panic. Less than two years after the devestating Wall Street bombing, the city was on alert for any sign of anarchist insurrection.
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Interview

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How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?

By email, usually, but I also enjoy being screamed at in the street.

What tools and software do you use to do your job?

Wordpress, Gmail, Twitter and a pathetically purple, not very smart phone called the Samsung Rumor Touch.

Did you work for your high school newspaper? If so, what did you do there?

I was the editor of my high school paper, but I quit to start a rival independent weekly called The Dark Sentinel. Those were good days.