Will Storr

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Will Storr is a British author, journalist and former photographer. He’s a contributing editor at Esquire and GQ Australia, and he also ghostwrites books and speaks publicly. He has written six books.

His first book, Will Storr versus The Supernatural, looked at why people believe in ghosts. It includes a behind-the-scenes look at the TV show Most Haunted, an interview with the Vatican’s exorcist, and his search for Janet Hodgson, the woman linked to the Enfield Poltergeist in 1977. The Heretics, published in the U.S. as The Unpersuadables, asks why some people cling to irrational beliefs, from Australian creationists to climate denier Lord Christopher Monckton, and even includes an undercover trip with holocaust deniers like David Irving.

The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone is an adult fairy tale set in a Michelin-starred kitchen in 1980s London. Selfie: How We Became So Self-obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us examines the rise of social media and its effects, arguing that pressure to be perfect shapes thinking. The New Yorker made a short film based on Selfie in 2018. The Science of Storytelling became a Sunday Times bestseller, and The Status Game argues that the need for social status drives much of life and society.

Storr has also ghostwritten, including Ant Middleton’s memoir First Man In, which was shortlisted for a British Book Award in 2019. He has reported from many situations around the world—wars, human rights abuses, and social issues—and written for major outlets such as The Guardian, The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Times. He has won One World Media and Amnesty International awards, and an AIB award for a BBC World Service documentary about abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. During the South Sudan conflict he was abducted by a militia and nearly executed. He has appeared on podcasts like Under The Skin, The Joe Rogan Experience, and others. His portraits of survivors of the Lord’s Resistance Army have been shown at the Oxo Tower. He is married to Farrah Storr. His great-great-uncle was the writer Samuel Smiles, author of Self-Help.