First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Christopher Castellani is the son of Italian immigrants and a native of Wilmington, Delaware. He resides in Boston, where he is the artistic director of Grub Street, one of the country's leading non-profit creative writing centers. He is the author of three critically-acclaimed novels, A Kiss from Maddalena (Algonquin Books, 2003)—winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in 2004— The Saint of Lost Things (Algonquin Books, 2005), a BookSense (IndieBound) Notable Book; and All This Talk of Love (Algonquin, 2013), a New York Times Editors' Choice and finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Literary Award. He is currently working on a new novel. The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story a collection of essays on writing, is now available from Graywolf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rachel Cantor's stories have appeared in magazines such as the Paris Review, One Story, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Fence, and Volume 1 Brooklyn. They have been anthologized, nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, short-listed by both the O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories, and awarded runner-up Bridport and Graywolf/SLS Prizes. She lives in New York, city of her heart, in the writerly borough of Brooklyn, but have at various points made her home in most U.S. states between Virginia and Vermont. Her novels include A Highly Unlikely Scenario and Good on Paper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah Gerard is the author of the novel Binary Star (Two Dollar Radio), the forthcoming essay collection Sunshine State (Harper Perennial), and two chapbooks, most recently BFF (Guillotine). Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine‘s “The Cut”, The Paris Review Daily, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Bookforum, Joyland, Vice, BOMB Magazine, and other journals, as well as anthologies for Joyland and The Saturday Evening Post. She writes a monthly column on artists' notebooks for Hazlitt and teaches writing in New York City.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft interview with Edan Lepucki, author of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam Johnson was born in South Dakota and raised in Arizona. He earned a BA in Journalism from Arizona State University in 1992; a MFA from the writing program at McNeese State University, and a PhD in English from Florida State University in 2000. Johnson teaches creative writing at Stanford University. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, Harper's, Tin House, Granta, and Playboy, as well as The Best American Short Stories. His works include include Emporium, a short-story collection, Fortune Smiles, which won the National Book Awarad, and the novels Parasites Like Us and The Orphan Master's Son, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft interview with Elizabeth McCracken. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jess Walter is the author of The Beautiful Ruins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sunil Yapa is the author of Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lauren Groff is the author of the novel The Monsters of Templeton, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers, Delicate Edible Birds, a collection of stories, and Arcadia, a New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, and finalist for the L.A. Times Book Award. Her latest novel is Fates and Furies. Her work has appeared in journals including the New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Tin House,One Story, McSweeney’s, and Ploughshares, and in the anthologies 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and three editions of theBest American Short Stories.  She lives in Gainesville, Florida with her husband and two sons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winner, discusses the challenges of writing a biography on King David, the portrayal of his wives, the real story of David and Goliath, and the complexity of the main character. She also shares insights on her writing process and how to deal with rejection.