First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Latest Episodes:

First Draft - Michelle Brafman Nov 23, 2015

Show notes

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 University.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft - Ann Patchett Nov 21, 2015

Show notes

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, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a collection of essays that examines the theme of commitment.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft - Bill Clegg Nov 21, 2015

Show notes

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

First Draft - Vanessa Garcia Nov 16, 2015

Show notes

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’s National Short Playwriting Award Anthology, as a finalist; and the Writer’s Digest annual award anthology). And, her most recent play, Grace, Sponsored by Monteverde. Her visual art has been exhibited around the United States and the Caribbean. As a journalist, feature writer, and essayist, her pieces have appeared in the LA Times, The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, The Southern Humanities Review, The Art Basel Magazine, The Rumpus, and numerous other publications. She’s also a Huffington Post Blogger. Her first novel is called White Light. She is currently at work on a memoir entitled My Cuban Routes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft: Edwidge Danticat Nov 15, 2015

Show notes

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 anthologized several times. Her work has been translated into numerous other languages, including Japanese, French, Korean, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish. Her books include Brother, I'm Dying, Claire of the Sea Light, The Dew Breaker and Breath, Eyes, Memory.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft: Charles Baxter Nov 10, 2015

Show notes

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 Warren Wilson College. www.charlesbaxter.com.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft: Leslie Jamison Nov 10, 2015

Show notes

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 appear in places like Harper's, Oxford American, A Public Space, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Believer. She's a columnist for the New York Times Book Review, and is currently finishing a doctoral dissertation at Yale about addiction narratives. She lives in Brooklyn, above a smoke shop.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft: Elliott Holt Nov 10, 2015

Show notes

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, Bellevue Literary Review, The Pushcart Prize XXXV (2011 anthology) and elsewhere. In addition to winning a Pushcart Prize, she was the runner-up of the 2011 PEN Emerging Writers Award. Her first novel You Are One of Them was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft: Bonnie Jo Campbell Nov 09, 2015

Show notes

Bonnie Jo Campbell grew up on a small Michigan farm with her mother and four siblings in a house her grandfather Herlihy built in the shape of an H. She learned to castrate small pigs, milk Jersey cows, and, when she was snowed in with chocolate, butter, and vanilla, to make remarkable chocolate candy. When she left home for the University of Chicago to study philosophy, her mother rented out her room. She has since hitchhiked across the U.S. and Canada, scaled the Swiss alps on her bicycle, and traveled with the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus selling snow cones. As president of Goulash Tours Inc., she has organized and led adventure tours in Russia and the Baltics, and all the way south to Romania and Bulgaria.

Her collection Women and Other Animals details the lives of extraordinary females in rural and small town Michigan, and it won the AWP prize for short fiction; her story "The Smallest Man in the World" has been awarded a Pushcart Prize. Her novel Q Road investigates the lives of a rural community where development pressures are bringing unwelcome change in the character of the land. Her critically-acclaimed short fiction collection American Salvage, which consists of fourteen lush and rowdy stories of folks who are struggling to make sense of the twenty-first century, was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award in Fiction.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft: Alan Lightman Nov 09, 2015

Show notes

Alan Lightman is the author of six novels, including Einstein’s Dreams, which was an international best seller and The Diagnosis, a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the author of two collections of essays and several books on science. A theoretical physicist as well as a writer, he has served on the faculties of Harvard and MIT, where he was the first person to receive a dual faculty appointment in science and the humanities. He lives in the Boston area.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices