A Few Minutes With . . . Katherine Eban

Joined ASJA when? This summer [2005]

Home base: Brooklyn, New York

Focus of writing: Investigative journalism/narrative nonfiction focused on public health and homeland security.

Education: Brown University, BA; Oxford University, M. Phil in English Literature; University of East Anglia, MA in Creative Writing.

Credits (magazine/book/film): Dangerous Doses: How Counterfeiters are Contaminating America’s Drug Supply (Harcourt, May 2005). Have worked as a reporter for the New York Times, the New York Observer, New York, and ABC News. Have also published articles in Vanity Fair, Self, The Nation, the New Republic, the New Yorker, Playboy, Vogue, Glamour and Good Housekeeping.

Awards: Grants: Fund for Investigative Journalism; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. Awards: Voice Award, Council of Senior Centers NYC, for exposing Medicaid fraud; Laurel, Columbia Journalism Review; finalist, National Magazine Award, public service category. Rhodes scholarship.

Turning point: In 1996, I stumbled into my first big investigative piece, a cover story for New York magazine that exposed unsafe and illegal blood testing practices at New York City’s largest blood center. I had been under contract to write a simple feature about blood donations but after the Center denied me access, I managed to speak with lab technicians and learned of a totally concealed problem. The analytic challenge coupled with the sense of exposing malfeasance led me to a Eureka moment: I’m an investigative reporter.

What you love best about what you do: Giving voice to people who would otherwise have none and exposing dangers and wrongdoing that would otherwise be left covered up.

Worst thing: The dwindling art of muckraking. Thinking about what would happen to our country if Seymour Hersh ever retired. I think he is a unique journalist, a national asset and a needed antidote to the supposedly balanced journalism that allows spin to be portrayed as just another side of the story.

Most memorable story: Hard to choose one but, among them, covering the September 11 attacks for the New York Times. I biked down to the twin towers just after the second plane hit, dove into a subway station as the first tower fell, and spent the next 40 hours reporting from ground zero, improvising everything from contacting the desk to finding a bathroom. I have never felt so clearly the elemental purpose of journalism: to record history in the making.

How did you break in? I took a very “don’t try this at home” route to journalism. After graduate school, I was working as a health-care policy analyst for a New York City official while in my spare time, writing small features for a local paper. The head of Bellevue Medical Center, who knew I was an aspiring writer, said to me, “If you want to write about Bellevue, we’ll give you unfettered access.” I pitched this offer to the New York Times Magazine and they accepted. I quit my day job, spent eight months at Bellevue, rewrote the piece four times. And when the article finally ran, at 8,000 words, I suddenly looked like a health-care journalist. And so I became one.

Dreams: To forget how hard it was to report and write my first book, Dangerous Doses, so that I will be in enough denial to embark on a second book.

Funny stories: Many ludicrous and woeful episodes. But here’s one I will never forget. While at the New York Observer, I wanted to be the first to report that a NYC hospital was doing a pilot study using the controversial morning-after pill, RU-486. A doctor involved in the study got angry about the article being out too quickly. The day it ran, she left an angry message on my answering machine, accusing me of “premature ejaculation.” I vowed never again to write about reproductive issues -- and haven’t since.

What inspires you? Reading great writing that fills the imagination, lifts the spirits or sparks a feeling of moral outrage. Also, the encouragement of my husband Ken.

What do you listen to while working? I wish I could listen to music when I work, but can’t. I need to have quiet.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be? Boy, don’t know. I wouldn’t mind being a house pet. Seriously, I would probably want to be an investigator, someone with subpoena power who was entitled, by law, to get all the documents that I can only dream of.

Reading right now? Just finished Generation Kill by Evan Wright.

Advice you were given you’d like to pass on: Two pieces of advice. A mentor told me, after I’d published my first controversial article: “This is not a popularity contest.” In college, an advisor told me during an intensive application for a scholarship, “Take it seriously but not personally.”

How you hope to affect others with your work: I want to expose inequities and change things for the better.

Favorite book: A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr is right up there, along with Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden, a staggeringly great piece of reporting.

Favorite bookstore: Books & Co. on Madison Ave. in Manhattan was a literary treasure lost to the Whitney Museum’s land grab.

Favorite cause: I am an animal lover. There is no limit to the happiness and well-being we can derive from our animal friends.

Favorite quote: Nietzche: “What does not destroy me makes me stronger.”