fiction.wikisort.org - Writer

Will Storr is a British author, and former photographer and journalist.[1][2] He has been a contributing editor at Esquire and GQ Australia.[3][4] He also works as a ghostwriter and public speaker.[5]

Will Storr
Will Storr in 2017
Nationality	British
Occupation	author, photographer, journalist, ghostwriter, public speaker
Spouse	Farrah Storr
Relatives	Samuel Smiles (great-great uncle)

Career

Storr has written six books under his own name. His first book, Will Storr versus The Supernatural, was an investigation into people who believe in ghosts. It included a behind-the-scenes exposé of the British television show Most Haunted and an interview with Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's chief exorcist. Storr also tracked down Janet Hodgson, who claimed to be focus of the Enfield Poltergeist haunting in 1977.[6][7]

The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science (published in the U.S. and Canada as "The Unpersuadables") was an investigation into irrational belief. Storr met creationists in Australia, the climate change denial Lord Christopher Monckton and went undercover on a trip to former World War II sites with a group of holocaust deniers and the revisionist historian David Irving.[8][9]

Storr's novel The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone was an adult fairy tale set in a Michelin starred kitchen in 1980s London.[10][11] It was described by The Guardian as "very good, if largely forgotten."[12]

Selfie: How The West Became Self-Obsessed was a history of the Western self. In the book, Storr tells the story of the self esteem movement, tracing its roots from Ayn Rand to the California assemblyman John Vasconcellos,[13] who argued that teaching children to love themselves would improve educational outcomes and reduce rates of drug abuse, teenage pregnancy and other social ills. Storr revealed that Vasconcellos lied about the scientific evidence for self-esteem, with one of the authors of his report calling it "a bunch of scholarly gobbledegook."[14][15]

Storr also discusses the rise of social media and its effects, attributing many of the more harmful ones to increased pressure on individuals and what he calls "perfectionistic styles of thinking".[16][17] In 2018 The New Yorker made a short film based on the book.[18]

The Science of Storytelling, was a Sunday Times Bestseller.[19]

The Status Game described Storr's theory about the hidden structure of social life, focusing on the need for social status and its effects on individual human life and society.[20]

In the book, Storr argues that the need for status is a fundamental driver of human behaviour and outlines three types of status game: dominance, through fear and coercion; success, through competence and virtue, which is about "maintenance of conformity, correct beliefs and behaviours", Storr also argues that moral panics are driven not by fear but by status pursuit. The Status Game was a 2021 Times book of the year.[21]

Storr also works as a ghostwriter. He wrote Ant Middleton's memoir First Man In that was shortlisted in the 2019 British Book Awards.[22]

Journalism

He has covered the South Sudanese Civil War, illegal street racing in the United Kingdom, male suicides, the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, the abuse of sugar crop workers in El Salvador, and the race-hate killing of an Aboriginal man in Australia.[23][24][25] [26][27] He has written for media outlets including The Guardian, The Observer, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Times.[28][29][30]

He received a One World Media award,[31] an Amnesty International award for his work regarding sexual violence against men,[32] and an AIB award for Best Investigative Documentary in 2013 for An Unspeakable Act, a BBC World Service documentary covering human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[33][34]

During his reporting in South Sudan Storr was abducted by a militia and narrowly avoided being executed.[35]

He has also been a guest on podcasts including Under The Skin with Russell Brand, The Jordan Harbinger Show, and The Ezra Klein Show, Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett,[36] and Making Sense with Sam Harris.[37][38][39][40]

Photography

His portraits of survivors of the Lord's Resistance Army, a heterodox Christian rebel group, have been exhibited at Oxo Tower.[41][42]

Personal life

He is married to Farrah Storr.[43] His great-great uncle is the journalist, government reformer and author of the Self-Help, Samuel Smiles.[35]

Selected bibliography

• Will Storr vs. The Supernatural: One Man's Search for the Truth About Ghosts (2006) ISBN 0061132195
• The Heretics: Adventures With The Enemies Of Science (2013) ISBN 1447208978
• The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science (2014) ISBN 1468308181
• The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone (2014) ISBN 1476730431
• Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us (2017) ISBN 1468315897
• The Science of Storytelling (2019) ISBN 1419743031
• The Status Game: On Social Position and How We Use It (2021) ISBN 0008354634

References

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