Susan Orlean, a New Yorker staff writer who is perhaps better known as the author of The Orchid Thief, read to a pretty packed room at the Hugo House. She grounded her talk in her experiences of writing "The American Man, Age 10," a profile of an "ordinary" American boy named Colin, and also "Lifelike," which is about the 2003 World Taxidermy Championship.

Here's what I learned:

• The model for Orlean is travel writing, not investigative journalism.

• Readers read to discover new worlds they didn't know they wanted to discover, she says.

• Adventure is the journey from knowing something to not knowing something, she says.

• Orlean writes at a treadmill desk.

• You can't fake curiosity.

• You can't fake curiosity.

• Don't do your homework.

• Your job as a reporter is first of all to listen.

• Do your homework.

• There are three steps to writing a story: (1) Report (2) Think (3) Write. The most important step is the most undervalued, and to the outside world it looks like idling.

• "You should be able to tell your story without notes," she said.

• Orlean does not like orchids.

• Orlean is into gospel.

• There exists in the world a thick catalogue full of taxidermy supplies.

• Do not underestimate the poetry of fact.

• If you have a job as a writer, you have a lucky life.

• Do stories that feel big, even if they look small.

• Orlean's next book will be about the L.A. Public Library

• She blames herself for the head cold currently sweeping through L.A.

• If you fail at writing a story, then write about the way the story failed.

• "There is no subject that has nothing of interest for you," she said.