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When it comes to that famous piece of writing advice, “write what you know,” Palo Alto author and columnist Keith Raffel has a lot to choose from. His wide-ranging résumé includes a stint as counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Congressional candidate, tech startup CEO and Harvard University resident scholar.
Raffel added “author” to that list 20 years ago, when he began writing thrillers, setting several of his five mystery novels in Silicon Valley. Raffel, who grew up in Palo Alto, said that he never planned on a writing career, but aims to publish another novel in the coming year.
In 2023, he began writing a nationally syndicated column on U.S. and international politics that runs weekly, called The Raffel Ticket, and in November, he published a collection of his first two years of columns, called “The Raffel Ticket: Betting on America.” He recently appeared at the Oshman Family JCC to discuss the book.
Raffel’s columns draw on a wide range of references, including Superman, (both the comic and the 2025 superhero movie) and Leo Tolstoy’s famously massive novel “War and Peace.” He also discusses his time in Washington, D.C. in the 1970s and ’80s, including work with then-Senator Joe Biden on legislation aimed at allowing prosecution of spies and rogue agents while protecting classified documents.
He splits his time between the Peninsula and Harvard University, his alma mater. As a resident scholar, he advises students, and in a full-circle moment, while on campus lives in the same dorm that he did as an undergraduate, which he describes as both “weird” but also ultimately inspiring. He has also been a lecturer at Harvard’s engineering school, where he taught a class on technology and ethics.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Embarcadero Media: You have a wide range of experience in politics, tech and academia. How did you get into writing?
Keith Raffel: It was kind of a fluke. I worked on The Campanile at Palo Alto High, and back when there was a Palo Alto Times, I was their on-campus correspondent.
But after that, I was working at a startup, and everything was fine, but it was getting a little stale. One of the things I did for people who worked with me is that UC Berkeley Extension puts out a big fat catalog of classes. And I would say, “You know, you really want to polish up your Java. You really want to get better at presentations. Go take a class and the company will pay for it.”
I was just leafing through it, and there was a course on writing a mystery. And that’s really how I got started.
Embarcadero Media: You’ve worked in many fields. Does that help provide some ideas for your columns?
Raffel: I write a weekly column. People have said, “Aren’t you worried about being able to find a topic each week?” Can I say “Yes, of course, I am.” Because when it comes to fiction, I have some (ideas). I have a friend named Sue Ann, and she says she has so many ideas she can never write all those books. Not me — it’s hard for me to figure out the subject for a novel. On the other hand, I have a Word file that is approaching 200 pages of ideas for columns. And as I’ve said, this is for better or for worse, that as long as you have Trump in the White House, John Roberts as chief justice and a war in the Middle East, I am not going to run out of things to say.
Embarcadero Media: With political events unfolding so quickly these days, when do you know: “This is the subject I’m going to commit to writing about this week?”
Raffel: I start thinking about it on Sunday, my column is due at 10:30am Pacific Time on Wednesday. Usually I write a rough draft on Tuesday, show it to my wife and then I finish it up on Wednesday morning. So I’m thinking about the topic maybe starting Sunday. But you know, Joan Didion has one of my favorite writers’ quotes of all time. In a paraphrase, because I’m not going to get it exactly right. But she said, ‘I don’t know what I think. I haven’t written it yet.’ So, I mean, I could come up with an idea, you know, halfway through I might swerve and find myself on the different side of this subject that I thought I knew where I stood.
So it’s like writing novels. In my very first novel, I was very surprised to find out that the murderer wasn’t the person I thought.
Embarcadero Media: You had to revisit almost two years worth of columns to compile the book. What did you learn about your work in that process?
Raffel: During the school year, I live with 19- to 22-year-olds, and having written the column and having read them over, I said to them, “I might look old to you, and I’m sitting here in the dining hall talking to you, but I’ve discovered that there’s an angry young man inside of me, and that angry young man is actually angrier, younger than any of you are.”
I’m not crazy all the time with where the world is going. So I revisited what had happened over time. Philip Graham, (husband of Washington Post publisher) Katharine Graham, said that “journalism is the first draft of history.” I think if you go read through two years of weekly columns, you are sort of saying, “So this is so this is what it was like. This is what I was thinking.” It’s kind of interesting, it’s kind of fun and it’s kind of scary.
For more information, visit keithraffel.com.
