About the Book
The Paper Microphone
At twelve, David F. Hyatt learned that the father he had believed dead for a decade had only just died. The revelation shattered the family story he had grown up believing—and ignited a lifelong determination to question what he was told.
A year later, he fashioned a microphone from a piece of paper and began hosting imaginary radio shows from his family’s garage in Virginia. It was the beginning of an unlikely journey that would carry him from small-town radio stations to the White House and eventually around the world as a foreign correspondent.
The Paper Microphone follows that journey through a life spent asking questions, chasing stories, and discovering that the truth is rarely as simple as it first appears.
Along the way, Hyatt reports from Europe, Africa, and Asia, encountering presidents and dictators, revolutionaries and diplomats, adventurers and eccentrics—and an unforgettable cast of characters who seem to appear wherever the road takes him. There are wars and revolutions, close calls and wrong turns, moments of absurdity, and the occasional king cobra. Some of the most memorable stories happen far from the microphone.
At the heart of the memoir is his marriage to Magida, his partner through decades of adventure, upheaval, laughter, and loss.
By turns funny, poignant, and deeply personal, The Paper Microphone is a coming-of-age story that stretches across a lifetime—a memoir about family secrets, love and loss, the stories we inherit, and finding the courage to trust your own voice.
David F. Hyatt
David F. Hyatt is an American author and former international broadcast journalist whose career took him from small-town radio to the White House and assignments across Europe, Africa, and Asia.
As a correspondent for the Voice of America, he reported on presidents and world leaders, conflicts and diplomacy, and the everyday lives of people caught up in history. He lived and worked in Washington, Paris, London, and Bangkok, reporting from more than forty countries.
Hyatt was twice elected president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand and was later named an Honorary Member for Life.
He is also the co-author of The Writer, the Lover, and the Diplomat, which was shortlisted for Book of the Year in the Philippines.
His memoir, The Paper Microphone, opens where his fascination with broadcasting — and with asking questions — began: a family garage in Virginia, where, as a boy, he fashioned a microphone from a piece of paper and “launched” his own imaginary Top Thirty Countdown radio show.
Today, Hyatt divides his time between Paris and the United States and continues to write about people, places, and unexpected turns that shape a life.