First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Sarah Gerard is the author of the novel Binary Star (Two Dollar Radio), the forthcoming essay collection Sunshine State (Harper Perennial), and two chapbooks, most recently BFF (Guillotine). Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine‘s “The Cut”, The Paris Review Daily, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Bookforum, Joyland, Vice, BOMB...

First Draft interview with Edan Lepucki, author of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam Johnson was born in South Dakota and raised in Arizona. He earned a BA in Journalism from Arizona State University in 1992; a MFA from the writing program at McNeese State University, and a PhD in English from Florida State University in 2000. Johnson teaches creative writing at Stanford University. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, Harper's, Tin House, Granta, and Playbo...

First Draft interview with Elizabeth McCracken. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jess Walter is the author of The Beautiful Ruins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sunil Yapa is the author of Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauren Groff is the author of the novel The Monsters of Templeton, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, Delicate Edible Birds, a collection of stories, and Arcadia, a New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, and finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award. Her latest novel is Fates and Furies. Her work has appeared in journals including the New Yorker, the Atlanti...

Australian-born Geraldine Brooks grew up in Sydney. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the mideast, Africa and the Balkans. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her second novel, March. Her  novels Caleb’s Crossing and People of the Book were  New York Times best sellers. Her first novel, Year of Wond...

Paul Harding is the author of the novel Tinkers, which won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers. He was a fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Harvard University, and Grinnell College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

Anthony Marra is the New York Times-bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, longlisted for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. It was selected as one of the ten best books of 2013 by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, New York Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, among numerous other year-...

Jack Driscoll is the author of four books of poems, two collections of short stories, and four novels. In addition, he is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, the NEH Independent Study Grant, two Pushcart Prizes and Best American Short Story citations, the PEN/Nelson Algren Fiction Award, the Associated Writing Programs Short Fiction Award, an...

Celeste Ng is the author of the novel Everything I Never Told You  (Penguin Press), which was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and Amazon's #1 Best Book of the Year 2014. She grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio, in a family of scientists. Celeste attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Wr...

James Salter grew up in New York City and was a career officer and Air Force pilot until his mid-thirties, when the success of his first novel, The Hunters(1957), led to a fulltime writing career. Salter’s potent, lyrical prose has earned him acclaim from critics, readers, and fellow novelists. His novel, A Sport and a Pastime (1967), was hailed by the New York Times as “nearly perfect as any Amer...

Dani Shapiro is the bestselling author of the memoirs Devotion and Slow Motion, and five novels including Black & White and Family History. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, One Story, Elle, The New York Times Book Review, the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and has been broadcast on “This American Life”.  Dani was recently Oprah Winfrey’s guest...

Liam is the author of The Cloud Atlas , All Saints and Listen. He serves in the English department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and was previously its chair, as well as coordinator of its Ph. D. program in creative writing. He has regularly contributed to local and national public radio, and is possibly the only person now living (but consult your own Venn diagram) who has written for...

Ben Fountain is the author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk. He has received the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, and a Whiting Writers' Award, among other honors and awards. He and his family live in Dallas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Fierro is the author of the novels Cutting Teeth and the forthcoming The Gypsy Moth Summer. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she was awarded a Teaching-Writing Fellowship, Julia founded The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop in 2002, and it has since become a creative home to over 2,500 NYC writers. Sackett Street was named a “Best NYC Writing Workshop” by The Village Voice, Tim...

Michelle Brafman is the author of the novel Washing the Dead.  Her short fiction short has won some awards, including a special mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and my essays and stories have appeared in Slate, The Washington Post, Tablet, Lilith Magazine, the minnesota review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and numerous other publications.  She teaches fiction at Johns Hopkins Universit...

Ann Patchett is the author of six novels, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician’s Assistant, Bel Canto, Run, and State of Wonder. She was the editor of Best American Short Stories, 2006, and has written three books of nonfiction, Truth & Beauty, about her friendship with the writer, Lucy Grealy, What now? an expansion of her graduation address at Sarah Lawrence College, and, most recently,...

Bill Clegg  is the author of two memoirs, Portrait of an Addict as A Young Man: A Memoir and Ninety Days. His novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, was long listed for the 2015 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award.  Clegg is also a literary agent and owner of The Clegg Agency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vanessa was born in the Cuban satellite city of Miami, to Cuban parents.   Her plays have been produced in Edinburgh, Miami, New York, and Los Angeles, among other cities. These include The Cuban Spring (a full-length, Carbonell Award nominee for Best New Play, 2015). The Crocodile’s Bite (a short, included in numerous anthologies such as Smith & Kraus’ Best Ten Minute Plays of 2016; City Theatre’...

Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to Brooklyn when she was 12 years old.  She now lives in Miami.  She has  taught creative writing at the New York University and the University of Miami. She has also worked with filmmakers Patricia Benoit and Jonathan Demme, on projects on Haitian art and documentaries about Haiti Her short stories have appeared in over 25 periodicals and have been ant...

Charles Baxter is the author of five novels, five short story collections, three collections of poetry and two essay collections on fiction. His novel The Feast of Love was nominated for a National Book Award.  His most recent story collection is called There’s Something I Want You to Do.  Baxter lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota and in the MFA Program for Writers at...

Leslie Jamison was born in Washington DC and grew up in Los Angeles. Since then, she's lived in Iowa, Nicaragua, New Haven, and New York. She's worked as a baker, an office temp, an innkeeper, a tutor, and a medical actor. Every one of these was a world; they're still in her. Jamison has written a novel, The Gin Closet, and a collection of essays, The Empathy Exams. Her work has appeared or will a...

Elliott Holt was born and raised in Washington, D.C. A former copywriter who worked at advertising agencies in Moscow, London, and New York, Holt attended the MFA program at Brooklyn College (where she won the Himan Brown award) at night while working full time in Manhattan during the day. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Salon, Guernica, Kenyon Review online, The Millions, Be...