First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Great Britain, and the United States. She is the author of the novels Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Secret Son, The Moor’s Account, and The Other Americans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

George Hodgman is the author of Bettyville. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tina Chang was raised in New York City. She is the first female to be named Poet Laureate of Brooklyn and is the author of the collections of poetry Hybrida, Of Gods & Strangers, and Half-Lit Houses. She is also the co-editor of the W.W. Norton anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Devi Laskar is the author of two poetry collections: Gas & Food, No Lodging and Anastasia Maps and the novel: The Atlas of Reds and Blues.  She lives in Northern California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rachel Howard is a writer of fiction, personal essays, memoir, and dance criticism. Her debut novel is called The Risk of Us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Miriam Toews is the author of Women Talking, Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness, All My Puny Sorrows, The Flying Troutmans, and Irma Voth, and one work of non-fiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is a winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers Trust Marian Engel/Timothy Findley Award. She lives in Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She is also the author of the young adult novel Belzhar. Wolitzer lives in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joanne Ramos was born in the Philippines and moved to Wisconsin when she was six. She graduated with a BA from Princeton University. After working in investment banking and private-equity investing for several years, she became a staff writer at The Economist.  The Farm is her first novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novels Lost and Wanted, The Newlyweds, and The Dissident, and the story collection Lucky Girls, which won the PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Molly Dektar is the author of The Ash Family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices