First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Evie Wyld's debut novel, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her second novel, All the Birds, Singing, won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Encore Award and the European Union Prize for Literature, and it was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award for Best Novel. In 2013 she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Her latest novel, The Bass Rock, won the Stella Prize. She lives in London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Lan Samantha Chang is the author of three novels, The Family Chao, All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost and Inheritance, and a story collection, Hunger. Her short stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, and The Best American Short Stories. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Academy in Berlin. Chang is the director of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives with her husband and daughter in Iowa City, Iowa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thrity Umrigar is the best-selling author of the novels Bombay Time, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, The Weight of Heaven, The World We Found, The Story Hour, Everybody’s Son and The Secrets Between Us. Her new novel is called Honor. Umrigar is also the author of the memoir, First Darling of the Morning and three children's picture books. Her books have been translated into several languages and published in over fifteen countries. She is a Distinguished University Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including On Animals, The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charlotte Wood is the author of six novels and three books of non-fiction. Her latest book is The Luminous Solution, an exploration of creativity and the inner life. Her last novel was the international bestseller, The Weekend. It was shortlisted for several awards including the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister's Literary Award, both of which she won, among others, for her previous novel, The Natural Way of Things, in 2016.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anahid Nersessian is an associate professor of English at University of California at Los Angeles. She is the author of The Calamity Form: On Poetry and Social Life; Utopia, Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment; and Keats’s Odes: A Lover’s Discourse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steven Schwartz is the author of four short story collections, Little Raw Souls, To Leningrad in Winter, Lives of the Fathers, Madagascar: New and Selected Stories, and three novels, The Tenderest of Strings, Therapy and A Good Doctor’s Son. His fiction has received the Nelson Algren Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize, the Cohen Award, the Colorado Book Award for the Novel, two O. Henry Prize Story Awards, the Foreword Review Gold Medal for Short Stories, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Bread Loaf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Ho Davies is the author of three novels including A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself, The Fortunes, and The Welsh Girl. He has also published two short story collections, The Ugliest House in the World and Equal Love. His new book is called The Art of Revision: The Last Word. He is currently on faculty at the University of Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tom Bissell was born in Escanaba, Michigan, in 1974. His short fiction has won two Pushcart Prizes and has been published in multiple editions of The Best American Series. He has also written eight works of nonfiction, including Apostle and (with Greg Sestero) The Disaster Artist, as well as many screenplays for video games and television. His new short story collection is called Creative Types. Bissell lives in Los Angeles with his family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Bazzett is a poet and teacher. His work has appeared in The Sun, Ploughshares, Linebreak, West Branch, The Collagist, Sixth Finch and 32 Poems, among others. He has written collections of poetry, some of which include Our Lands Are Not So Different, The Interrogation, The Temple, and The Echo Chamber. He also published a translation of The Popol Vuh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices