Local Speaker Series- Dan Paisner
September 12, 2023 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Event Details
Author Dan Paisner has been called “the world’s most prolific living ghost(writer).” As a ghostwriter, he has written more than 50 books in collaboration with athletes, actors, politicians, business leaders, and ordinary individuals with extraordinary stories to tell. Dan’s latest book, Balloon Dog, is a darkly comic tale set in Park City, UT.
This event is sponsored by The Friends of the Park City Library.
More about Dan Paisner:
Daniel Paisner is a journalist, author and podcaster, with more than 70 books to his credit, including 17 New York Times best-sellers. He is the “voice” of Serena Williams, Steve Aoki, John Kasich, Whoopi Goldberg, Denzel Washington, Ray Lewis, Ron Darling, Gilbert Gottfried, Anthony Quinn and dozens of other name-above-the-title celebrities. He is the winner of two NAACP Image Awards for his work with Shark Tank panelist and serial entrepreneur Daymond John, and his novel “A Single Happened Thing” was named an Indies Finalist as best book of the year by the editors of Foreword Reviews. He has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, ESPN: The Magazine and on National Public Radio. New York magazine once called him “the world’s most prolific ghost,” which may or may not have been a compliment.
Over the course of his ghostwriting career, Paisner has taken on the real-life personas of dozens of compelling individuals, including a World Series of Poker champion; the son of a Yanomami tribeswoman; a plus-size supermodel; an FBI hostage negotiator; a three-term Democratic Mayor of New York City; a three-term Republican Governor of New York State; a daytime television talk show host; another daytime television talk show host; still another daytime television host; a #1 ranked women’s tennis player; a bilateral amputee mountaineer; an Emmy winner; a Grammy winner; an Oscar winner; a Tony winner; an “Apprentice” winner; two First Daughters; two network television weathermen; an unlikely prisoner of Libya’s civil war; a New York City bail bondsman; an undersea explorer; a world champion surfer; a foul-mouthed, misogynist comedian; an urban fashion mogul; a Cosby kid; an Olympic swimmer; an autistic high school student; an NFL Hall of Famer; and on and on.
Paisner hosts the podcast As Told To, which features long-ish, freewheeling-ish interviews with fellow authors about their experiences ghostwriting and collaborating with notable figures. His “darkly funny and painfully true” new novel, “Balloon Dog,” was published by Koehler Books in June 2022 to not-quite-widespread critical acclaim.
Synopsis of Balloon Dog:
What happens when the life you are living is no longer the life you imagined? When you are well and truly stuck? A darkly comic tale of longing and legacy, Balloon Dog, the fourth novel from best-selling ghostwriter Daniel Paisner, prompts readers to consider what it means to leave a mark and what it takes to be swept up in the same currents that move almost everyone else.
A brazen art heist pushes our protagonists to reflect on the choices they’ve made-and the ones that have been made for them. Set in the near- present, the story turns on the ill-conceived theft of a high-end Jeff Koons sculpture, lifted in plain sight from its perch beside a luxurious mountain home in Park City, Utah, and follows the musings, misadventures, and meeting of minds of a Long Island writer in midlife crisis and the art thief behind the ill conception.
Balloon Dog poses two central questions: Is the transformative power of art enough to lift us from our days? And what is art, anyway?
Date: September 12, 2023 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Time: 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Venue
- Park City Library
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1255 Park Avenue
Park City, Utah 84060 + Google Map