‘There’s just too much to say’: Meet Mayor Michelle Wu’s chief speechwriter

Ezra Zwaeli, WWW alum and director of speechwriting for Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, on writing her 2024 State of the City address.

The assignment before Ezra Zwaeli is daunting: How does one get your arms around the city of Boston, and all its complexities, in 3,200 words?

But that is his task, his most important one of the year. The State of the City address is the mayor’s most heralded annual speech, and this year’s mayoral monologue will happen Tuesday evening. While speaking to The Boston Globe late last week, Zwaeli, who is Mayor Michelle Wu’s director of speechwriting, was enmeshed in the nitty gritty of how to fit Wu’s accomplishments and future vision into 23 minutes of rhetoric. He anticipated the run-up to the speech to be filled with revisions;for last year’s State of the City, changes were being made to the teleprompter until 14 minutes before the mayor hit the stage.

“It’s designed to be a reflection of an astonishing scope of ideas,” said Zwaeli, a 27-year-old Jamaica Plain resident, recently in his ninth-floor City Hall office.