Welcome to GabFest Read, September edition. I'm John Dickerson.

On this GabFest reads, I talk with Ada Calhoun, a journalist and nonfiction author who set out to finish a biography of her favorite

poet, Frank O'Hara, that Calhoun's father, the New Yorker art critic, Peter Sheldall, started decades ago.

Instead, she wrote almost a poet, Frank O'Hara, my father, and me, which is both an exploration

of the O'Hara she finds in taped

interviews that her father did and a reflection on her own fraught history with her celebrated father,

and the New York art world she grew up in and the one she learns about on those tapes.

The book is out now from Grove Atlantic Press. Here's our conversation.

So, Ada, we're going to start with basic questions. Who was Frank O'Hara?

Frank O'Hara was a beloved mid-century poet.

He was very much a part of the scene of painters and poets in downtown New York in 1950s, 1960s.

He was a central part of that scene, but then he also was untimely ripped from this earth.

Tell us a little bit about his death.

He died at 40 on Fire Island in a freak accident.

He was hit by a dune buggy in the middle of the night.

And of course, Fire Island is known for having no cars.

So I think his is maybe the only vehicular death recorded over there.

And now tell us who your father is.

His name is Peter Sheldall.

He is the art critic for the New Yorker magazine.

And he has always been a massive Frank O'Hara fan and moved to New York City in part to

become as much like Frank O'Hara as possible. And why were you drawn to him? To my father or to

...