She has been on that particular task for years. More often, though, Anolik cultivates a mood of dishy secret-sharing, in which the novels are less interesting as literary works than as keyholes to the authors’ hidden pasts. Produced by C13Originals, the podcast - which finishes its 14-episode run this week - is mainly about literary culture at the Vermont school, which in the ‘80s was infamous for its steep tuition, louche vibe and disregard for formal grades, making it a magnet for both well-heeled ne’er-do-wells and ambitious artsy types who were too eccentric for the Ivies.

The new sequel to that podcast, “Once Upon a Time.at Bennington College,” claims Sherman Oaks-bred “ Less Than Zero” author Bret Easton Ellis as one of its central figures and its key animating force. Not famous-famous, but not exactly B-listers either: She wrote a memorable 2014 Harper’s essay on troubled West Coast jazz saxophonist Art Pepper and a 2019 quasi-biography of ‘70s scenester-author Eve Babitz, “Hollywood’s Eve.” And she co-hosted a 2020 podcast on scandal-struck porn star Traci Lords, “Once Upon a Time.in the Valley.”

For about a year after she graduated from Princeton in 2000, she says, she worked at IMG, “like, in the mailroom.” Yet the Vanity Fair journalist has built a career chronicling the lives of famous L.A. Lili Anolik hasn’t spent much of her life at an L.A.

Obsessed