Sarah Vowell

Sarah Vowell
Vowell in August 2007
Born	Sarah Jane Vowell (1969-12-27) December 27, 1969 (age 54) Muskogee, Oklahoma, U.S.
Education	Montana State University (BA) School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MA)[1]
Occupations	Author journalist essayist social commentator actress
Years active	1987–present

Sarah Jane Vowell (born December 27, 1969)^[2] is an American historian,^[3] author, journalist, essayist, social commentator and actress. She has written seven nonfiction books on American history and culture. Vowell was a contributing editor for the radio program This American Life on Public Radio International from 1996 to 2008, where she produced numerous commentaries and documentaries. She was also the voice of Violet Parr in the 2004 animated film The Incredibles and its 2018 sequel.

Sarah Vowell was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma on December 27, 1969. Her family moved to Bozeman, Montana when she was eleven.^[4] She has a fraternal twin sister, Amy. Vowell graduated from Bozeman High School.^[5] She earned a B.A. from Montana State University in 1993 in Modern Languages and Literature,^[6] and an M.A. in Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999.^[7]

Vowell's articles have been published in The Village Voice, Esquire, Spin Magazine, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, SF Weekly, and The Washington Post.^{[8][9][10][11][12][13][14]} She has been a regular contributor to the online magazine Salon.com,^[15] and was one of the original contributors to McSweeney's, participating in many of the quarterly's readings and shows.

Vowell's first book, Radio On: A Listener's Diary (1997), which featured her year-long diary of listening to the radio in 1995, caught the attention of This American Life host Ira Glass, and it led to Vowell becoming a frequent contributor to the show.^{[citation needed]} Thereafter, segments on the show became the subjects for many of her subsequent published essays.^{[citation needed]} Vowell's first essay collection was Take the Cannoli (2000), which was followed by The Partly Cloudy Patriot (2002).

In 2005, Vowell served as a guest columnist for The New York Times during several weeks in July, briefly filling in for Maureen Dowd.^[16] Vowell also served as a guest columnist in February 2006.^[17] Her book Assassination Vacation (2005) describes a road trip to tourist sites devoted to the murders of presidents Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield and William McKinley.^[18] Vowell's book, The Wordy Shipmates (2008), analyzes the settlement of the New England Puritans in America and their contributions to American history.^[19] Also in 2008, Vowell's essay about Montana appeared in the book State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America.

Vowell wrote Unfamiliar Fishes (2011), which discusses the Overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Newlands Resolution.^[20][21] In April 2011, the book became a New York Times Bestseller.^[22] In her Los Angeles Times review, Susan Salter Reynolds wrote that Vowell's "cleverness is gorgeously American: She collects facts and stores them like a nervous chipmunk, digesting them only for the sake of argument."^[20] Allegra Goodman, writing in The Washington Post, describes the work as "a big gulp of a book, printed as an extended essay... Lacking section or chapter breaks, Vowell's quirky history lurches from one anecdote to the next. These are often entertaining, but in the aggregate they begin to sound the same..."^[21] Goodman also wrote that "Vowell tells a good tale" with "shrewd observations", but that she found that "the narrative wears thin where casual turns cute and cute threatens to turn glib."^[21]

Her most recent book is Lafayette in the Somewhat United States (2015), an account of the Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat who became George Washington's trusted officer and friend, and afterward an American celebrity.^[23][24] In a review for The New York Times, Charles P. Pierce wrote, "Vowell wanders through the history of the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath, using Lafayette's involvement in the war as a map, and bringing us all along in her perambulations… and doing it with a wink."^[23] NPR reviewer Colin Dwyer wrote, "It's awfully refreshing to see Vowell bring our founders down from their lofty pedestals. In her telling, they're just men again, not the gods we've long since made of them."^[24]

Vowell has appeared on television shows such as Nightline, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,^[25] The Colbert Report, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Late Show with David Letterman, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.^{[26][better source needed]}

In April 2006, Vowell served as the keynote speaker at the 27th Annual Kentucky Women Writers Conference.^[27] In August and September 2006, she toured the United States as part of the Revenge of the Book Eaters national tour, which benefited the children's literacy centers 826NYC, 826CHI, 826 Valencia, 826LA, 826 Michigan, and 826 Seattle.^{[citation needed]}

Vowell also provided commentary in Robert Wuhl’s 2005 Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl HBO specials.^[28]

Vowell provided the voice of Violet Parr, a shy teenager, in the 2004 Pixar animated film The Incredibles, and returned to her role for the film's sequel, Incredibles 2, in 2018.^[29][30] Vowell also voiced the character in various related video games, and for Disney on Ice presentations in the years following the film's release.^[31][32] Director Brad Bird heard Vowell on This American Life,^[33] "Guns", in which she and her father fire a homemade cannon and determined Vowell’s voice fit the character.^[34] Pixar made a test animation for Violet using audio from that sequence, which was included on the DVD of The Incredibles.^[35] Vowell also wrote and was featured in a documentary included on the same DVD, entitled "Vowellett—An Essay by Sarah Vowell", in which she reflects on the difference between being an author of history books on assassinated presidents and voicing the superhero Violet, and on what the role meant to her nephew.

Vowell was featured prominently in the 2002 documentary about the alternative rock band They Might Be Giants, entitled Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, and she appeared with band members John Linnell and John Flansburgh in the DVD commentary for the movie.^[36] She also provided commentary for the April 2006 episode "Murder at the Fair: The Assassination of President McKinley," one of ten in the History Channel miniseries 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America.^[37]

In September 2006, Vowell appeared as a minor character in the ABC drama Six Degrees.^[38] She appeared in an episode of HBO's Bored to Death, as an interviewer in a bar, and in 2010, appeared briefly in the film Please Give, as a shopper.^[39][40] Vowell also appeared on The Daily Show as a Senior Historical Context Correspondent.^[41]

Vowell writes that she has a small amount of Cherokee Nation ancestry (about 1/8 on her mother's side and 1/16 on her father's side). She is not a citizen of the Cherokee Nation or any other tribe. She retraced the path of the forced removal of the Cherokee from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma, known as the Trail of Tears, with her twin sister Amy. In 1998, This American Life chronicled her story, devoting the entire hour to her work.^[42] Vowell spent many vacations with her sister and nephew visiting historical sites. As a child she attended church three times a week and seldom travelled.

She has described herself as a “culturally Christian atheist”.^[43]

Vowell lives in Manhattan, New York. She is on the advisory board of 826NYC, a nonprofit tutoring and writing center for students aged 6–18 in Brooklyn.^[44]

• 1997—Radio On: A Listener's Diary, ISBN 0-312-18301-1.
• 2000—Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World, ISBN 0-7432-0540-5.
• 2002—The Partly Cloudy Patriot, ISBN 0-7432-4380-3.
• 2005—Assassination Vacation, ISBN 0-7432-6003-1.
• 2008—The Wordy Shipmates, ISBN 1-59448-999-8.
• 2011—Unfamiliar Fishes, ISBN 1-59448-787-1.
• 2015—Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, ISBN 1-59463-174-3.

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1987	End of the Line	Diner Waitress	Uncredited
1999	Man in the Sand	Herself	Documentary
2002	Gigantic	Herself
2004	The Incredibles	Violet Parr	Voice
2010	Please Give	Shopper
2011	Hit So Hard	Herself	Documentary
2013	A.C.O.D.	Lorraine
2018	Incredibles 2	Violet Parr	Voice

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2006–2007	Six Degrees	Edie	2 episodes
2006	The Colbert Report	Herself	1 episode
2009	Bored to Death	Journalist
2010	Lafayette: The Lost Hero	Herself	Documentary
2011	Jimmy Kimmel Live!		Special guest
2011, 2013, 2015	The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
2011	Last Call with Carson Daly
	The Tavis Smiley Show
2015	Conan
2016	Well Read V
2018	The Who Was? Show		Episode: “George Washington & Marco Polo”

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2004	The Incredibles	Violet Parr
2004	The Incredibles: When Danger Calls
2012	Kinect Rush: A Disney-Pixar Adventure
2013	Disney Infinity		Credited as Sara Vowell
2014	Disney Infinity 2.0
2015	Disney Infinity 3.0
2018	Lego The Incredibles

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2005	Vowellet – An Essay by Sarah Vowell	Herself, writer, archive footage	Included as a bonus feature to The Incredibles on home media; details Vowell's voice work during the film while also writing Assassination Vacation and how her This American Life writing/narration earned her the role of Violet.

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2018	Incredicoaster	Violet Parr	Voice

External audio
Consonant Vowells: Sarah Vowell on This American Life and Hearing Voices
How A French Teenager Helped Save Us From 'The Fatal Tendency Of Disunion', John O'Brien, KUOW, November 12, 2015

• Sarah Vowell author page
• Sarah Vowell page at This American Life
• Steven Barclay Agency, Sarah Vowell page
• Sarah Vowell at IMDb
• Gilmer, Marcus (October 21, 2008). "Interview: Sarah Vowell". Chicagoist. Archived from the original on June 8, 2010.
• Appearances on C-SPAN