The Cowboy: Dispatch from Fuzzy Needle
Greetings Fuzzy Needle friends,
Howdy. I write this missive to you from Patagonia, Arizona, a teeny border town nestled in the mountains south of Tuscon. I spent a week driving to this place (whew) and I’ll be spending the next few weeks hanging out here and doing cowboy stuff.
There’s a lot of things that have surprised me in the Southwest: the dry air, the tumbleweeds, the oil drills, the javelinas (wild pigs that you can smell from half a mile away). Nothing has surprised me more than the cowboys. Cowboys ordering lengua tacos from a truck in Waco, cowboys at the Nogales Walmart stocking up on American store brand chips, cowboys in the RV park, cowboys in the fancy cocktail bar. (There are cowgirls too, but I reckon they’re less readily identifiable simply because cowboys tend to wear their hats everywhere.)
Which, yeah, fork found in kitchen. I guess what surprises me is that it’s neither some hokey costume nor some symbol of mythically perfect heroism. It’s just how people dress here. It’s one of those strange kinships between the Southeast and the Southwest — our respective reputations precede ourselves, and besides those reputations are heavily embellished, all of which means an out-of-towner might gawk at your uncle buying cat litter at the H-E-B simply cuz he’s wearing a hat.
Speaking of historical embellishments, we got to chat with Laurie Gwen Shapiro this week about Amelia Earhart, a hero of American folklore in her own right. She’ll be doing a reading of her new book about Earhart at the Wilmington shop on the 16th. All proceeds will go to the Cape Fear Literacy Council — check out the interview below and get your ticket here. Also be sure to scroll down to see the rest of the upcoming events at both shops. (Tomorrow Durham is hosting the launch party for Super Empty, an awesome NC hip hop magazine that just released its first issue.)
I have more thoughts on the Southwest to share with all you Fuzzy friends, but maybe in the next edition — I gotta put on the Stetson and feed the horses. Here’s this week’s newsletter…
Q & A with Laurie Gwen Shapiro
Here’s a question: Who determines what a person was really like? Is it the person herself? Is it the person’s friends and family? Is it the person’s boss? Is it the archive? Which archive? Is it public opinion? Which public?
These are the questions just beneath the surface of The Aviator and the Showman, a book examining the complex relationship between American aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her husband George Putnam. It’s been named one of 2025’s best books by NPR, The New Yorker, and Smithsonian Magazine, and it’s by the award-winning author Laurie Gwen Shapiro (The Stowaway). Shapiro endeavoured to tell Earhart’s story — which was the stuff of myth back in the day as it is now — with honesty, accuracy and wit. She’s doing a reading from the book at the Wilmington shop tomorrow. Here’s our interview with her, which has been lightly edited for clarity.
Nikolai Mather: So, in addition to being a bestselling author, you also work as a professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU. How did your background in journalism inform your approach to The Aviator and the Showman?
Laurie Gwen Shapiro: My background in journalism shaped the reporting, but my work in documentary film and fiction shaped the way I tell the story. Journalism taught me to go back to primary sources, to question inherited narratives, and to keep pushing until the record became clearer. With a figure like Amelia Earhart, the story has been told so many times that it can start to feel fixed. I assumed it wasn’t, and went back to the original record.
Documentary filmmaking taught me something just as important: you have to show up in the world of the story. Once you do, you start seeing what the documents can’t give you, scale, distance, geography, the feel of a place. Reporting teaches you that the story often begins when you arrive. And before all of that, I was a novelist, so I think a lot about scene, pacing, dialogue, and character. I wanted this book to be faithful to the record, but written with momentum and life.
NM: You mention in the book’s preface that you saw yourself almost as an “avenger” for Amelia Earhart and her story, which for the past century has been subject to all kinds of — mand I’m saying this word a lot — embellishments, or even outright libel. Were there ever any moments in your research where you had to take a step back and be like, “wait, is this the most accurate way to tell this story?” If so, how did you handle it?
LGS: Constantly. With a story this well known, you quickly see how certain versions harden over time, especially the more flattering or dramatically convenient ones. I found myself returning again and again to a basic question: what can I actually prove, and what has simply been repeated?
When the record didn’t fully support a widely accepted version, I slowed down and stayed with the evidence: letters, logs, financial records, contemporaneous reporting. If something held up, I used it. If it didn’t, I either left it out or made clear that it was part of the legend, not the record. You also learn, as a reporter, not to take the inherited legend, or an estate’s preferred version, at face value. George Putnam, for example, is often portrayed as a charming prankster. But this was also a man who staged his own kidnapping for publicity, concocted fake bomb threats to his family’s publishing firm to sell books, and could be ruthless toward rival women aviators. “Prankster” is much too soft a word.
And with Amelia, I had to be just as careful. She has often been remembered as a great pilot in a broad, unquestioned way. I don’t think the record fully supports that. She was a good pilot, and unquestionably a brave one, but she had real limitations, especially in navigation. At the same time, she was on a punishing speaking circuit and was being promoted at a level that outpaced her preparation. The idea of being an “avenger” wasn’t about defending Earhart or simplifying her into a heroine. It was about clearing away some of the noise so a more accurate, more complicated person could come into view. I trusted those tensions more than any cleaned-up version.
NM: What was something you were surprised to learn about Earhart? About her husband George Putnam?
LGS: What surprised me most about Earhart was how conscious she was of her own image. She understood publicity, knew how to work it, and did, even as she was taking real risks in the air. That made her more interesting to me, not less. She was not just a symbol. She was an active participant in the making of “Amelia Earhart.”
With George Putnam, what surprised me was not simply the scale of his influence, but how aggressively he shaped the story. He was not just promoting her. He was producing her, building the machine around her, feeding the press, crafting the myth, and helping turn a talented aviator into a national obsession.
What stayed with me most, though, was how messy and unsentimental the beginning of their relationship really was. It began as an affair while George was still married to Dorothy Binney Putnam, the Crayola heiress, and in some ways the story starts not in the clouds but in a distinctly Jazz Age tangle of ambition, desire, and opportunity. By the Depression, that energy hardened into something else: a modern American marriage built on love, calculation, mutual need, and a shared understanding of what fame could do. The closer I got to the record, the less interested I became in reducing either of them to a single idea.
Laurie Gwen Shapiro will be reading from her book The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon at Fuzzy Needle in Wilmington on April 14th, featuring a Q&A from John Jeremiah Sullivan and music from Julia Rothenberger. All ticket proceeds benefit the Cape Fear Literacy Council. Purchase tickets here.
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Shop recs
〰️ Shop recs
Wilmington
Durham
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Upcoming events
〰️ Upcoming events
Durham
April 16th, Super Empty Release Party, the Fuzzy Needle, 7 pm… We were psyched to learn about North Carolina’s newest hip hop magazine Super Empty, and we’re even more psyched to host their inaugural issue release party. Learn more here.
April 22nd, Old Time Social, the Fuzzy Needle, 7 pm… Our monthly hangout sesh at the shop. Bring games, drinks + snacks, and good vibes. More details here.
May 4th, Twisted Teens w/ Paint Fumes and Hex Files, the Fuzzy Needle, 7:30 pm… “Oh no it’s a Monday show” bud it’s TWISTED TEENS! Tickets available at the door. More details here.
Wilmington
April 16th, An Evening with Laurie Gwen Shapiro, the Fuzzy Needle, 6:30 pm… Featuring a Q&A with John Jeremiah Sullivan and music from Julia Rothenberger. Tickets here.
April 18th, Record Store Day, the Fuzzy Needle, 8 am - 6 pm… It’s the best day of the year. We’ve got free coffee, DJs, a wide selection of discounted music and exclusive RSD releases — plus, free RSD totes for every purchase of $100+ (while supplies last, so come early.) More details here.
April 22nd, Earth Day Cacao Ceremony, the Fuzzy Needle, 7 pm… A little something to reconnect with the Earth and your spirit. Seats are limited. More details here.
April 24th, Pause for Poetry Open Mic, the Fuzzy Needle, 7 pm… Featuring the extremely excellent Speak Ya Peace. Come for words and vibes. More details here.
May 15th, The Turkey Buzzards Record Release Show, the Fuzzy Needle, 7 pm… With support from Stripmall Ballads. Get your tickets here.
May 22nd, Hiding Places, the Fuzzy Needle, 7 pm… It’s gonna be great. Tickets here.
Postscript
Just wanted to shout out RSD at the Wilmington location one more time. It really is a good time every year — we hope to see you bright and early for some good coffee and even better music.
Wilmington is also participating in Indie Bookstore Day via the Cape Fear Book Crawl. I believe I mentioned that in a previous issue of the newsletter, but for more details, go here. That’ll be from April 23rd to the 26th.
Thanks also to everyone who has voted Wilmy as WECT’s Best in the Cape Fear. It means a lot. If you’d like to vote as well, you can do so here. You can vote daily through April 30th.
And, as always, you can check out our stuff on Discogs and eBay. See you at the shop.
- Your friends at the Fuzzy Needle
