Remembering Tracy Kidder: Courting the Approval of the Dead

On March 24, 2026 the writer Tracy Kidder (age 80) died of lung cancer. I hadn't heard he had died last month, and only realized while looking for something in his wikipedia page. Upon reading of his death, I went searching through some old dvds to see if I still had the recording I made of a talk he gave many years ago in Baltimore.

I found the disk and upon putting it in my computer saw the rather ominous words Last Modified 18 years ago on the files. It doesn't seem like it could have possibly been so long ago that I met him. He came to my little writing class and talked to us for a while, and later that evening gave a lecture that was open to the community.

He was and remains one of my literary heroes. Often when authors would come to give lectures, they would spend most of the time dully reading from their latest book and answer a few questions. His talk was nothing like that, he told us the story of how he became a writer, and spoke on the craft of writing in a way that still resonates with me today.