Victoria Lautman

Who is Victoria Lautman?

Victoria Lautman is a Chicago broadcast journalist and writer with a specialty in arts, culture, and the humanities.

Lautman has an M.A. in Art History from George Washington University, and a B.A. in Anthropology and Art History from the University of New Mexico. She attended Merton College at Oxford University for archaeological field training, and spent one summer on a Bronze Age excavation in the Scottish Hebrides. Following graduate school, she worked for four years at the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

In 2004, she created Chicago's premier author-interview series, Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman, a free, hour-long interview taped each month before a live audience that was broadcast for six years. Hosted by the Chicago Public Library at the Harold Washington Library Center, the series was heard on 98.7WFMT radio. Lautman hosted and produced WOTR, which drew dozens of renowned authors to Chicago, including Junot Diaz, Edward P. Jones, Elizabeth Strout, Louise Erdrich, Frank McCourt, Michael Cunningham, Augusten Burroughs, Edwidge Danticat, Peter Carey, Anne Lamott, Martin Amis, Russell Banks, Richard Price, and Mary Gaitskill.

Prior to inaugurating this series, Lautman was a featured host and contributor on Chicago Public Radio for two decades. Beginning as a free-lance arts reviewer 1984, she eventually hosted and co-produced her own arts and culture magazine program, "Artistic License", which aired weekly for eight years. Lautman then joined the daily magazine show, "848", and became a regular interviewer and contributor on a wide variety of subjects, including not only arts and culture but also medicine, education, and politics. Her humorous essays on day-to-day life were a regular feature of the program. She continues to be a featured presenter for the Chicago Humanities Festival, interviewing Jonathan Lethem, Lady Antonia Fraser, Leslie Marmon Silko, Amitav Ghosh, and others.