Maurice Carlos Ruffin [Host: Drew Hawkins]

On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Drew Hawkins interviews Maurice Carlos Ruffin.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author, most recently, of the historical novel, The American Daughters. He is also the author of The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, which was longlisted for the Story Prize and was a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and We Cast a Shadow, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and International Dublin Literary Award. A recipient of an Iowa Review Award in fiction, he has been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, the Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas. 

Drew Hawkins is a writer and journalist in New Orleans. He's the producer and host of Micro, a podcast for short but powerful writing. You can find his work on NPR, The Guardian, Scalawag Magazine, HAD, and elsewhere.

Today's episode is brought to you in part by the podcast Micro, where today you can hear Maurice read on the new episode, available wherever you listen to podcasts like this one.

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Full conversation topics include:

-- book tour 

-- a previous life as a lawyer and restaurant-owner

-- becoming a writer

-- overcoming imposter syndrome

-- paces of production and practice

-- distraction as being useful

-- the reading you do while writing

-- approaching novels and/or stories

-- New Orleans

-- the new novel THE AMERICAN DAUGHTERS

-- research

-- knowing who you are 

-- writing as a man about women 

-- jumping through time  and sound

--  POV

-- freedom and loss

-- a forthcoming book

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Podcast theme music  by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.

The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton, author of Home Movies.