The Waves: A Conversation With One of Blake Bailey's Accusers

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4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2021

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Blake Bailey gained fame for telling the stories of famous men. But before that, he was a beloved middle school teacher—who went on to have questionable sexual relationships with several of his former eighth grade students. When his biography of Phillip Roth was published this spring, some former students started to speak out about their experiences with Bailey. A few revealed that after years of staying in touch with them as a mentor of sorts, he had made unwelcome sexual advances. Former student Eve Crawford Payton says he raped her when she was 22 years old. On today’s episode, Slate news director Susan Matthews is first joined by colleagues Josh Levin and Molly Olmstead, who were her collaborators on “Mr. Bailey’s Class.” They unpack what it was like to work on the piece, which stories about sexual assault get told, and what that means for journalism as a mechanism for obtaining justice. Later in the show, Matthews is joined by Eve Crawford Peyton. Peyton wrote an essay for Slate, detailing her experiences with Bailey, including the alleged rape. She talks to Susan about what her life has been like in the aftermath of the Bailey revelations and her struggle to juggle her conflicting emotions about her former mentor. We’re so excited that the Waves is back as a place to have these important conversations. Going forward, each week on The Waves, a different pair of hosts will talk about one big thing that’s on their minds. But this week, we needed to break the brand-new format. Podcast production by Cheyna Roth, with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas. Send feedback and recommendations on what The Waves should cover to [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves.
0:13.0	Welcome to the waves. Slates podcast about terrible teachers this week, at least.
0:18.2	We're back. And every episode, you're going to get a new pair of slate feminists talking about
0:23.1	things that they can't get off of their minds. I'm Susan Matthews. I'm Slates News Director
0:27.4	and I'm the editorial lead for the waves. Given that this is our first episode,
0:32.2	we're going to completely abandon the format. But we have a really good reason for it.
0:37.0	Today, we're going to talk about an incredibly important story that slate recently published
0:41.5	about Blake Bailey. Now, this episode is going to contain discussions of rape and sexual assault,
0:47.4	so if you're not comfortable hearing those types of discussions, please feel free to turn off this
0:51.8	episode and we'll see you next week. Now, who is Blake Bailey? He's a literary biographer whose
0:58.5	most recent book was about Philip Roth. But before that, he was an eighth grade English tutor in
1:03.4	New Orleans. He taught for seven years and during those seven years, as we and other news outlets
1:09.8	found out, he formed really close personal relationships with his students. He stayed in touch
1:15.2	with many of the girls he taught as eighth graders as they went through high school and college.
1:19.3	And he went on to have questionable sexual encounters with many of them. The nature of the
1:24.0	encounters varied. Some women immediately rebuffed his advances. Some women had what they
1:28.6	described as consensual sex with their former teacher. One woman, Eve Crawford Payton, told us
1:34.4	a story about Blake Bailey raping her when she was 22 years old. I want to note here that Bailey's
1:41.2	attorney has denied any accusations of impropriety. But what does this mean for the format of our show
1:46.7	this week? We're going to start with a conversation among those reporters. Slates Josh Levine and Molly
1:51.8	Olmsted will join me to talk about what's not in our piece, what it's like to report a Me Too story
1:57.2	now years after everything started. And why reporting still isn't really the way to get justice,
	...

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