Interview

In two separate pieces Susan Casey talks about her remarkable book The Devil's Teeth in which she reports on her time spent with the Great White Sharks, and the extraordinary people who study them, on the Farallon Islands, just 30 miles off the coast of San Francisco; and about the writing of The Wave - about giant waves and those who hunt them.

Watch a video of Susan Casey and Laird Hamilton discussing The Wave

Susan Casey talks about The Devil's Teeth

You're the development editor for Time Inc. and previously the editor of Sports Illustrated Women and creative director of Outside magazine. But the idea for the book did not grow out of an assignment. What drew you to this story?

As a journalist I'm always trolling for compelling stories, but in this case, the story came to me. I was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico (a truly land-locked place), working for Outside magazine, and I had developed a raging case of mononucleosis. As a result, I was spending much more time than usual lying around, and one day while I was doing just that, I flipped on the TV and found myself watching the most extraordinary BBC documentary. In the book, I describe the action onscreen in detail but, ...