First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Bill Clegg is a literary agent in New York and the author of the bestselling memoirs Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and Ninety Days. His first novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, hit the New York Times bestseller list and was longlisted for the National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. His new novel is called The End of the D...

Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers The Emperor’s Children and The Burning Girl, and a book of essays, Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Debra Spark is the author of five books of fiction, two collections of short stories, one anthology, and two works of nonfiction. Her most recent books are the novel Unknown Caller, the short story collection The Pretty Girl, and a second book of essays on fiction writing, And Then Something Happened. She teaches fiction at Colby College and at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College....

Rebecca Watson is the author of the novel little scratch. She writes for publications including the Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, and Granta. In 2018 she was short-listed for the White Review Short Story Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Szalay is the author of five works of fiction: Spring, The Innocent, London and the South-East, for which he was awarded the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes, and All That Man Is, for which he was awarded the Gordon Burn prize and Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, and Turbulence, winner of the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Szalay was born in C...

Peter Geye is the author of the award winning novels, Safe from the Sea, The Lighthouse Road, and Wintering, winner of the Minnesota Book Award. He currently teaches the year-long Novel Writing Project at the Loft Literary Center. Born and raised in Minneapolis, he continues to live there with his family. His new novel is called Northernmost. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/ad...

Cherie Dimaline is a member of the Georgian Bay Metis Community in Ontario who has published 5 books. Her 2017 book, The Marrow Thieves, won the Governor General’s Award and the prestigious Kirkus Prize for Young Readers, was a finalist for the White Pine Award, and was the fan favourite for CBC’s 2018 Canada Reads. Her new book is Empire of Wild. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone....

Margot Livesey is a writer and teacher. Her first book, published in 1986, was a collection of stories called Learning By Heart. Since then Margot has published eight novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona, The House on For tune Street, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Mercury, and The Boy in the Field. The Hidden Machinery, a collection of essays on wr...

R.L. Maizes is the author of the short story collection We Love Anderson Cooper and the novel Other People's Pets. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and have aired on NPR. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Benjamin Nugent is the author of the short story collection Fraternity. He is the winner of The Paris Review’s 2019 Terry Southern Prize. His stories have been published in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading and The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from the Paris Review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ursula Hegi is the author of The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls, The Worst Thing I've Done, Sacred Time, Hotel of the Saints, The Vision of Emma Blau, Tearing the Silence, Salt Dancers, Stones from the River, Floating in My Mother's Palm, Unearned Pleasures and Other Stories, Intrusions, and Trudi & Pia. She teaches writing at Stonybrook's Southhampton Campus and she is the recipient of more than...

Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of How to Pronounce Knife. Her stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, NOON, The Believer, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018, and O. Henry Prize Stories 2019. She is the author of four books of poetry, Cluster, Light, Found and Small Arguments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...

Michelle Bowdler is the author of Is Rape a Crime? Michelle is a recipient of a 2017 Barbara Deming Memorial Award for non-fiction and has been a Fellow at Ragdale and MacDowell Colony. She has been published in the New York Times and in the anthologies The Anatomy of Silence and We Rise to Resist: Voices from a New Era in Women’s Political Action. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone...

Sejal Shah is the author of the debut essay collection, This Is One Way To Dance. Her stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Brevity, Conjunctions, Guernica, the Kenyon Review Online, Literary Hub, Longreads, and The Rumpus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has written two collections of stories, published together as Yesterday’s Weather, one book of non-fiction, Making Babies, and six novels, including The Gathering, which won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, The Forgotten Waltz, The Green Road, and Actress. In 2015 she was appointed as the first Laureate for Irish Fiction, and in 2018 sh...

TaraShea Nesbit is a writer and teacher. Her second novel, Beheld, is a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and an Indies Next Pick for April 2020. Her first novel, The Wives of Los Alamos, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, and winner of two New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards....

Marie Mutsuki Mockett was born and raised in California to a Japanese mother and American father, and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Her books include American Harvest, Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye, and Picking Bones from Ash. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mary South is a graduate of Northwestern University and the MFA program in fiction at Columbia University. For many years, she has worked with Diane Williams as an editor at the literary journal NOON. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Baffler, The Believer, BOMB, The Collagist, Conjunctions, Electric Literature, Guernica, LARB Quarterly, The New Yorker, NOON, The Offing, The...

Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and author of the New York Times bestseller Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, which is being adapted as a television series. In addition to her clinical practice, she writes The Atlantic’s weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column and contributes regularly to The New York Times and many other publications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoic...

Vanessa Hua is an award-winning, best-selling author and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her novel, A River of Stars, was named to the Washington Post and NPR’s Best Books of 2018 lists. Her short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, received an Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature and was a finalist for a California Book Award, and was reissued by Counterpoint in 202...

Jane Hirshfield is an award-winning poet, essayist, and translator. She is the author of nine collections of poetry, including Ledger; The Beauty, longlisted for the National Book Award; Come, Thief, a finalist for the PEN USA Poetry Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt, a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Hirshfield is also the author of two collections of essays, Nine Gates: Entering t...

Sue Monk Kidd writes fiction and non-fiction. Her novels include The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair, The Invention of Wings, and The Book of Longings. Some of her non-fiction titles include The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and When the Heart Waits. In this episode we discuss her new novel The Book of Longings Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Nemens is a writer, illustrator, and editor. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in February 2020. In 2018, Nemens became the seventh editor of The Paris Review, the nation’s preeminent literary quarterly. In this episode we discuss The Cactus League. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ann Napolitano is the author of the novels Dear Edward, A Good Hard Look, and Within Arm’s Reach. She is also the Associate Editor of One Story literary magazine. She received an MFA from New York University; she has taught fiction writing for Brooklyn College’s MFA program, New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies and for Gotham Writers’ Workshop. In this episode we dis...

Anna Solomon is the author of three novels—The Book of V., Leaving Lucy Pear, and The Little Bride—and a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. Her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, One Story, The Boston Globe, Tablet, and elsewhere. Anna is a graduate of Brown University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches writing at Barnard Coll...