First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His plays include of Boss Grady’s Boys, The Steward of Christendom, Our Lady of Sligo, The Pride Parnell Street, and Dallas Sweetman. His novels include The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, Annie Dunne, A Long Long Way, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, The Secret Scripture, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize, On Canaan’s Side, The Temporary Gentleman, Days Without End, A Thousand Moons, and Old God’s Time. He has also published three collections of poetry. He is the recipient of the Irish-America Fund Literary Award, The Christopher Ewart-Biggs Prize, the London Critics Circle Award, The Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, and Costa Awards for Best Novel and Book of the Year. He lives in Wicklow with his family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mona Simpson is the best-selling author of Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, My Hollywood, and Casebook. Off Keck Road was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Heartland Prize from the Chicago Tribune. She has received a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is on the faculty at UCLA and also teaches at Bard College. In 2020, she was named publisher of The Paris Review. She lives in Santa Monica, California. Her new novel is called Commitment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of six novels: Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, Eligible, and Rodham. Her first story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It, was published in 2018 and picked for Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club. Her books have been selected by The New York Times, Time, Entertainment Weekly, and People for their “Ten Best Books of the Year” lists, optioned for television and film, and translated into thirty languages. Her new novel is Romantic Comedy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Abraham Verghese, MD, MACP, is Professor and Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor, and Vice Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the School of Medicine at Stanford University. He is also a best-selling author and a physician with a reputation for his focus on healing in an era where technology often overwhelms the human side of medicine. He received the Heinz Award in 2014 and was awarded the National Humanities Medal, presented by President Barack Obama, in 2015. His new novel is The Covenant of Water. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mai Nardone is a Thai and American writer whose fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, Granta, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He lives in Bangkok. His collection is called Welcome Me to the Kingdom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ann Lauterbach is the author of ten books of poetry and three books of essays, including The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience and The Given & The Chosen, her 2009 collection, Or To Begin Again, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Lauterbach’s work has been recognized by fellowships from, among others, the Guggenheim Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is the Ruth and David Schwab II Professor of Languages and Literatures at Bard College. A native of New York City, she lives in Germantown, New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andrew Porter is the author of the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the novel In Between Days, which was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and an IndieBound “Indie Next” selection, and the short story collection The Disappeared. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Porter is currently a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Trinity University in San Antonio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cathleen Schine is the author of the 12 novels including The Love Letter and Rameau’s Niece, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and The Grammarians. Her new novel is called Künstlers in Paradise. In addition to novels, she has written articles for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. She grew up in Westport, Ct. And lives in Venice, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2021. He is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. His new poetry collection is called Above Ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert Lopez is the author of three novels, Part of the World, Kamby Bolongo Mean River —named one of 25 important books of the decade by HTML Giant, All Back Full, and two story collections, Asunder and Good People. His novel-in-stories is called, A Better Class Of People. His new nonfiction book is called Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere. He teaches at Stony Brook University and has previously taught at Columbia University, The New School, Pratt Institute, and Syracuse University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices