Local Limelight: Duke professor and NYT columnist Frank Bruni, on the lure of North Carolina
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Photo illustration: Axios Visuals; Photo: Courtesy of Duke University
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, who moved back to the Triangle to teach at Duke University in 2021, is one of the country's most prolific writers on politics, pop culture and food.
Bruni lives in Chapel Hill and teaches journalism and public policy at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy, all while maintaining a weekly column and publishing two books in as many years.
- In April, he published his latest book, "The Age of Grievance," exploring the deterioration of the nation's political climate.
We talked with Bruni for our latest Local Limelight conversation. The Q&A has been edited for Smart Brevity.
✍️ What is your writing routine? To the extent that I have a routine, I've become a real morning person. I tend to get up by 5am, sometimes 4:30am, and usually do most of my writing before 8am.
- One reason, ... my dog, Regan, sleeps in and doesn't go for a walk until I wake her.
🍕 Favorite place to eat in the Triangle: Pizzeria Mercato.
🎓 What originally brought you to the Triangle? I got what was then called the Morehead Scholarship at UNC. (Bruni graduated from UNC in 1986.)
🌳 What brought you back here after living in New York? I was kind of ready to shake things up a bit and ready to leave New York. I wanted to live somewhere a bit smaller, a bit slower, a bit greener.
- And Duke actually got in touch with me not knowing any of that.
🏙️ What's changed the most in the Triangle since your college days? The thing that struck me the most right off the bat is that downtown Durham was not this magnet (of things to do). I mean now, Durham almost seems to by styling itself after Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or something. When I was a student you were told not to go there.
- I did go to Durham with some regularity, though, because in that era, when gay life at UNC was much more hush hush, the gay bar that you went to was in Durham. It was called, I want to say, Times Square.
📖 Last great book you read: "Horse" by Geraldine Brooks
📱 First thing you read in the morning: I don't mean this to sound like a plug for the New York Times, but I do Wordle, Connections, the Mini Crossword, Strands and the Spelling Bee before I get out of bed.
🎧 Go-to podcast: I'm not a big podcast person but I tend to listen to NPR's "Up First" every morning.
🎶 How do you unplug: I have a nice Sonos sound system with speakers in multiple rooms. I turn on a favorite playlist quite loud; pour myself a glass of white wine, and I rub the dog's stomach while I drain my glass of wine.
- Currently on the playlist: Chappell Roan, Van Morrison, San Fermin, Aimee Mann, Radiohead, the 1975 and Lana Del Rey.
🏈 What is the Triangle missing? I am a guilty and abashed pro football fan. It's the only one of the big four professional sports that I follow.
- So I'm very conscious of the fact that where I live has no football team and, no, the Carolina Panthers all the way over in Charlotte do not count.
🎥 What you're looking forward to: There's so much I am not looking forward to ... but I am always looking forward to the fall movie season as an avid movie watcher.
🏫 What have you learned from teaching: There's this itch that we all have, especially as we get older, to define the generations behind us. And I think to teach young people is to realize that there are no tidy generational truisms, and that whenever we play that game, we're being reductive in a way that is just not true or fair.