Author and “New Yorker” Writer Susan Orlean Drives Down Memory Lane in “Joyride”

“I became a real writer at Willamette Week .”

Those are the words of Susan Orlean in her new memoir, Joyride (Avid Reader Press, 353 pages, $32), the story behind the celebrated journalist’s famous stories.

After an illustrious four-decade-plus career in magazines and books—including The Orchid Thief , which was made into the 2002 film Adaptation— it might be easy to forget that the journalist got her start here at WW . (We didn’t forget, of course.) After working here from 1978 to 1982, Orlean kept writing for alternative newsweeklies such as The Village Voice in New York and The Boston Phoenix before diving into the magazine industry, where she landed in her current position as a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1992.

Early ’80s Portland was sleepier and cheaper tha