Anna David (Photo: Eric Fischer Photo)

You might recognize Anna David (blog, Twitter) from several different forms of media, including her novels; her freelance pieces for countless newspapers, magazines and websites; or her four-year stint as the sex and relationship expert on G4’s Attack of the Show. This past April saw the release of an anthology on reality television (conceived and edited by David), Reality Matters: 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can’t Stop Watching. I was lucky enough to recently email interview David about the anthology.

Tim O’Shea: Did you let the contributors pick which reality show they wrote about? Or did folks have to fight over who got to write about American Idol or Sober House?

Anna David: I asked each writer I contacted to tell me the show that either resonated the most with them or had changed their perspective in some way. Several people had a lot of shows they were considering covering and we’d talk it out and try to figure out which sounded like it would make the best essay. With Idol, I happened to know the world’s greatest expert on it – my friend, Richard Rushfield, who covered Idol for the L.A. Times and is now doing a book on the show. So there was no one else who could do that one. There were a couple fights over The Hills, though. And even some over Real World, but I pulled rank on that one.

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