First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Latest Episodes:

First Draft - Lynne Tillman Apr 14, 2025

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Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. Her novels are Haunted Houses; Motion Sickness; Cast in Doubt; No Lease on Life, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; American Genius, A Comedy, and Men and Apparitions. Her nonfiction books include The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965–1967, with photographs by Stephen Shore; Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co.; and What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Her new collection is Thrilled to Death.

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First Draft - Colum McCann Apr 07, 2025

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Colum McCann is the Dublin-born author of thirteen books. He has won numerous international honors including the U.S National Book Award and an Oscar. His work has been published in over 40 languages. He is the co-founder of Narrative 4, a global non-profit that uses storytelling to build community engagement in schools around the world. His new novel is called Twist.

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First Draft - Karen Russell (Returns) Mar 31, 2025

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Karen Russell is the author of six books of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She has received MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, son, and daughter. The Antidote is her second novel.

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First Draft - Mai Der Vang Mar 24, 2025

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Mai Der Vang is the author of Primordial, Yellow Rain, and Afterland. Her honors include th Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets, among others. The recipient of a Guggenheim and Lannan Literary Fellowship, she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.

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First Draft - Erika Krouse Mar 17, 2025

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Erika Krouse writes fiction and nonfiction. Her book Tell me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigationwon the Colorado Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and the 2023 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Erika’s novel, Contenders, was a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her previous short story collection Come Up and See Me Sometime,won the Paterson Fiction Award, was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and is translated into six languages. Her new short story collection is Save Me, Stranger.

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First Draft - Sarah Gerard (returns again) Mar 10, 2025

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Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, a New York Times Critics’ and NPR Best Book of the Year, a finalist for the Southern Book Prize, and longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award; the novels True Love and Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Prize; a coauthored art book, Recycle; and the chapbook The Butter House. Her new book of investigative journalism is called Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable.

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First Draft - Charlotte Wood (Returns) Mar 03, 2025

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Charlotte Wood is the author of seven novels and three books of non-fiction. Her novel Stone Yard Devotional was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. Her previous books include The Luminous Solution, a book of essays on the creative process; the international bestseller, The Weekend; and The Natural Way of Things which won a number of prizes including The Stella Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award. Her features and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Literary Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Saturday Paper among other publications.

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First Draft - Paul Theroux Feb 24, 2025

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Paul Theroux is the author of many highly acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Great Railway Bazaar, The Mosquito Coast, Riding the Iron Rooster, and Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories. In 2015, Paul Theroux was awarded a Royal Medal from the Royal Geographical Society for “the encouragement of geographical discovery through travel writing.” His new short story collection is The Vanishing Point.

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First Draft - Lidia Yuknavitch (Returns Again) Feb 17, 2025

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Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of the novels Thrust, The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award's Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the Reader's Choice Award, the novel Dora: A Headcase, a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories Of Violence, and the short story collection Verge. Her widely acclaimed memoir The Chronology of Water was a finalist for a PEN Center USA award for creative nonfiction and winner of a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award Reader's Choice. Her new nonfiction book is Reading the Waves.

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First Draft - Sarah Chihaya Feb 10, 2025

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Sarah Chihaya is a book critic, essayist, and editor. Her work has appeared in The New

Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, New York magazine, The

Atlantic, and The Yale Review, among other places, and she is the co-author of The

Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism. She has taught at Princeton

University, New York University, and UC Berkeley. She is currently a contributing editor

at Los Angeles Review of Books and lives in Brooklyn. Her new book is Bibliophobia.

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