First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Allegra Goodman is the author of Isola, Sam, Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, Paradise Park, and Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist). Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Commentary, and Ploughshares and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories.  Her new novel is This is Not About Us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/a...

Rachel Khong’s first novel Goodbye, Vitamin, won the 2017 California Book Award for First Fiction, and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for First Fiction. Her second novel, Real Americans, was a New York Times bestseller.  She was the managing and executive editor of Lucky Peach magazine and edited a cookbook called All About Eggs. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space f...

Kate Schatz is a feminist author, educator, and public speaker. She's the New York Times-bestselling author of the "Rad Women" book series; the novel Where the Girls Were; the 33 ⅓ book Rid of Me: A Story; and Do the Work: An Anti-Racist Activity Book, co-written with W. Kamau Bell. She lives in the Bay Area with her wife, three children, and pets. In all she does, Kate is committed to sharing rad...

Camille T. Dungy is the author of America, A Love Story. She has also written the memoir Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers, and four other collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award. Dungy edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, the first anthology to bring African...

Naeem Murr, a dual US and UK citizen, is the author of four novels: The Boy, a New York Times Notable Book; The Genius of the Sea; and The Perfect Man, which was awarded The Commonwealth WritersʼPrize for the Best Book of Europe and South Asia, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.  His new novel is Every Exit Brings You Home. He is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Among his awards are...

Ada Limón is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Prize; The Carrying, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and t...

Andrea Mara is a number one international bestselling Irish author. Several of her books have been shortlisted for Irish Crime Novel of the Year awards.  Someone in the Attic was her U.S. debut and her novel All Her Fault was adapted into a television series on Peacock.  Her new novel It Should Have Been You is her newest novel.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Philip Schultz is the author of nine poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Failure. Some of his other works include Like Wings, winner of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award in literature; Deep within the Ravine awarded the Academy of American Poets Lamont prize; The Holy Worm of Praise Living in the Past and The God of Loneliness: Selected and New Poems...

Tayari Jones is the author of four novels including An American Marriage, which was an Oprah’s Book Club Selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list as well as his year-end roundup. The novel was awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction Aspen Words Literary Prize and an NAACP Image Award. It has been published in two dozen countries.  Her other works include Leaving Atlanta, Sil...

Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the award-winning short story collection Corpus Christi, the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This and the editor of Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His short stories have been published in anthologized in New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best; The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories. His...

Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His plays include of Boss Grady’s Boys, The Steward of Christendom, Our Lady of Sligo, The Pride Parnell Street, and Dallas Sweetman. His novels include The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, Annie Dunne, A Long Long Way, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Secret Scripture, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, On Canaan’s Side, The Te...

R.L. Maizes is the author of A Complete Fiction. Her debut novel, Other People’s Pets, won the 2021 Colorado Book Award in Fiction and was a Library Journal Best Debut of Summer/Fall 2020. She also is the author of the short story collection, We Love Anderson Cooper. Her short stories have aired on National Public Radio and can be found in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading and in The Best...

David Guterson is the author of thirteen books, including the PEN/Faulkner Award winner Snow Falling on Cedars, which was made into a major motion picture, translated into twenty–five languages, and has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide. He lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington. His new novel is Evelyn in Transit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ann Packer is the author of four best-selling novels including Some Bright Nowhere, The Children’s Crusade, Songs Without Words, and The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, which received the Kate Chopin Literary Award among many other prizes and honors. Her short fiction has been published in two collections — Mendocino and Other Stories and Swim Back to Me — and includes stories that appeared in The New Y...

George Saunders is the author of twelve books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for best work of fiction in English, and was a finalist for the Golden Man Booker, in which one Booker winner was selected to represent each decade, from the fifty years since the Prize’s inception. His stories have appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1992. The short story coll...

Torrey Peters is the author of the novel Detransition, Baby, which won the 2021 PEN/Hemingway award for debut fiction and was named a Best Book of the Century by the New York Times. Her second book of short stories is called Stag Dance. Torrey is an amateur sauna builder, rides a pink motorcycle, and splits her time between Brooklyn and Santa Marta, Colombia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

Daniyal Mueenuddin was brought up in Lahore, Pakistan, and Elroy, Wisconsin. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, and The Best American Short Stories 2008, selected by Salman Rushdie. His collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. For a number of years he...

Ashley Shelby’s debut novel, South Pole Station, received praise from The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio and others.  It was also named a New York Times Editor's Pick and an Indie Next Pick, as well as a Best Book of 2017 by Shelf Awareness, and was awarded the 2017 Lascaux Prize in Fiction. Her 2024 story collection, Honeymoons in Temporary Locations is currently short...

Benjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up in Merseyside. Seascraper is his fifth novel. His previous works have been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Book Prize, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the RSL Encore Award, the CWA Gold Dagger Award and the European Union Prize for Literature. In 2014, he won France’s Prix du Roman Fnac. He is a senior lectur...

Marisa Silver⁠ is the author of the novels At Last, The Mysteries; Little Nothing, which was a New York Times Editor's Choice; Mary Coin, which was a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Southern California Independent Bookseller's Award; The God of War, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and No Direction Home. Her story collections include Alone With You and Babe in...

Devon O’Neil is a freelance journalist based in Breckenridge, Colorado, and the author of The Way Out: A true story of survival in the Heart of the Rockies, published in November 2025 by HarperOne. In the past he has worked as a daily newspaperman, a staff writer for ESPN.com, and a correspondent for Outside magazine. O’Neil’s stories have been anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing and...

Michael Kleber-Diggs is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. He was born and raised in Kansas and now makes his home in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His debut poetry collection, Worldly Things, won the Max Ritvo Poetry prize and will be published by Milkweed Editions in June, 2021. Michael teaches creative writing through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and at colleges and high schools in Minnes...

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of nine books: Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, The Giant’s House, Niagara Falls All Over Again, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Thunderstruck & Other Stories, Bowlaway, The Souvenir Museum, The Hero of This Book, and A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction. She’s received grants and fellowships from United States Artists, the Guggenheim Foundatio...

Ruben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants. He completed his MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is a graduate of Harvard College where he studied History and Literature and Latinx Studies. His debut story collection, There is a Rio Grande in Heaven, was a finalist for The Story Prize, and longlisted for the the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal for Excel...

Megha Majumdar is the author of the novel A Guardian and a Thief, which is Oprah’s Book Club selection for October 2025. The novel is a finalist for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize and has been longlisted for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal. Her first book, the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, was nominated for the National Book Award, the National...