Acclaimed essayist, short fiction writer, and author of the debut novel The Floating World, C. Morgan Babst, took a few minutes to rap with me about the wrath of hurricanes, writing a love letter to the city of New Orleans, and her secrets to staying organized and productive.
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Start getting more from your site today! Morgan is a New Orleans native who started her journey at NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts), before studying writing at both Yale, and NYU. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Oxford American, Guernica, the Harvard Review, the New Orleans Review, among others.
An essay she wrote on New Orleans funeral culture (“Death Is a Way to Be,” Guernica, June 15, 2015) was named a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2016.
Her ambitious and haunting first novel, The Floating World, was chosen as an Amazon Editor s Pick for Best Books of October 2017, and was called a “… beautiful, relentless portrait of the devastation [Hurricane Katrina] inflicted on a city, and a family…”.
In a Kirkus starred review, the book was called a “Deeply felt and beautifully written; a major addition to the literature of Katrina.”
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In this file C. Morgan Babst and I discuss:
- Her background in the arts and the long road to publishing her first novel
- Why a novel 12 years in the making is so relevant today
- How credit card bills can boost your productivity
- Why you need to turn off “creativity” while you’re writing
- How to keep track of your best ideas
- Why you need to get into a “Lynchian” state of mind as you write
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The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience