Emma Glass was born in Wales and now lives in London. She is a writer and works as a children’s nurse. Her debut novel Peach has been translated into seven languages and was on the longlist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second novel is called Rest and Be Thankful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, and the New York Times Bestselling author of 32 books, including The Undefeated, illustrated by Kadir Nelson, How to Read a Book, illustrated by Melissa Sweet, Swing, Rebound, which was shortlisted for prestigious Carnegie Medal, and, his Newberry medal-winning middle grade novel, The Crossover and the poetry collection Light for the World To See, among others.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her work has won awards and honors including the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction. She is a 2011 National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree and a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts fellow. Her stories have appeared in magazines including The Paris Review, A Public Space, American Short Fiction, Callaloo, The Sewanee Review, and Phoebe, and have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2008, 2010, 2017, and 2018, and in New Stories From The South. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cynan Jones was born in 1975 near Aberaeron, Wales where he now lives and works. He is the author of five short novels, The Long Dry, Everything I Found on the Beach, Bird, Blood, Snow, The Dig, and Cove and Stillicide. He has been longlisted and shortlisted for numerous prizes and won a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award 2007, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2014, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2015 and the BBC National Short Story Award 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Lethem is the bestselling author of twelve novels, including The Feral Detective, The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Arrest is his twelfth novel. He currently teaches creative writing at Pomona College in California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yishai Sarid was born and raised in Tel Aviv Israel. He studied law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and has a Public Administration Master’s Degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of five novels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susan Minot is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, poet, and screenwriter. Her first novel, Monkeys, was published in a dozen countries and won the Prix Femina Étranger in France. Her novel Evening was a worldwide best seller and became a major motion picture. She received her MFA from Columbia University and lives with her daughter in New York City and on an island off the coast of Maine.  Her new story collection is called Why I Don’t Write: And  Other Stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bryan Washington is the author of the short story collection Lot and the novel Memorial. He is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree.  He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, Vulture, The Paris Review, and GQamong others.  He lives in Houston.  Memorial was nominated for The Center for Fiction’s 2020 First Novel Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ken Bonert was born in South Africa and is the grandson of Lithuanian immigrants. His debut novel The Lion Seeker won both the 2013 National Jewish Book Award for Outstanding Debut Fiction and the 2013 Edward Lewis Wallant Award. His fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, Grain and the Fiddlehead. His journalism has appeared in the Globe and Mail and other publications. He lives in Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bill Clegg is a literary agent in New York and the author of the bestselling memoirs Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and Ninety Days. His first novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, hit the New York Times bestseller list and was longlisted for the National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. His new novel is called The End of the Day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers The Emperor’s Children and The Burning Girl, and a book of essays, Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Debra Spark is the author of five books of fiction, two collections of short stories, one anthology, and two works of nonfiction. Her most recent books are the novel Unknown Caller, the short story collection The Pretty Girl, and a second book of essays on fiction writing, And Then Something Happened. She teaches fiction at Colby College and at the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rebecca Watson is the author of the novel little scratch. She writes for publications including the Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, and Granta. In 2018 she was short-listed for the White Review Short Story Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Szalay is the author of five works of fiction: Spring, The Innocent, London and the South-East, for which he was awarded the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes, and All That Man Is, for which he was awarded the Gordon Burn prize and Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, and Turbulence, winner of the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Szalay was born in Canada, grew up in London, and now lives in Budapest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Geye is the author of the award winning novels, Safe from the Sea, The Lighthouse Road, and Wintering, winner of the Minnesota Book Award. He currently teaches the year-long Novel Writing Project at the Loft Literary Center. Born and raised in Minneapolis, he continues to live there with his family. His new novel is called Northernmost. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cherie Dimaline is a member of the Georgian Bay Metis Community in Ontario who has published 5 books. Her 2017 book, The Marrow Thieves, won the Governor General’s Award and the prestigious Kirkus Prize for Young Readers, was a finalist for the White Pine Award, and was the fan favourite for CBC’s 2018 Canada Reads. Her new book is Empire of Wild. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Margot Livesey is a writer and teacher. Her first book, published in 1986, was a collection of stories called Learning By Heart. Since then Margot has published eight novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona, The House on For tune Street, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Mercury, and The Boy in the Field. The Hidden Machinery, a collection of essays on writing, was published by Tin House Books in 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

R.L. Maizes is the author of the short story collection We Love Anderson Cooper and the novel Other People's Pets. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and have aired on NPR. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Benjamin Nugent is the author of the short story collection Fraternity. He is the winner of The Paris Review’s 2019 Terry Southern Prize. His stories have been published in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading and The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from the Paris Review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ursula Hegi is the author of The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls, The Worst Thing I've Done, Sacred Time, Hotel of the Saints, The Vision of Emma Blau, Tearing the Silence, Salt Dancers, Stones from the River, Floating in My Mother's Palm, Unearned Pleasures and Other Stories, Intrusions, and Trudi & Pia. She teaches writing at Stonybrook's Southhampton Campus and she is the recipient of more than thirty grants and awards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of How to Pronounce Knife. Her stories have won an O. Henry Award and appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Granta, NOON, The Believer, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018, and O. Henry Prize Stories 2019. She is the author of four books of poetry, Cluster, Light, Found and Small Arguments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michelle Bowdler is the author of Is Rape a Crime? Michelle is a recipient of a 2017 Barbara Deming Memorial Award for non-fiction and has been a Fellow at Ragdale and MacDowell Colony. She has been published in the New York Times and in the anthologies The Anatomy of Silence and We Rise to Resist: Voices from a New Era in Women’s Political Action. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sejal Shah is the author of the debut essay collection, This Is One Way To Dance. Her stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Brevity, Conjunctions, Guernica, the Kenyon Review Online, Literary Hub, Longreads, and The Rumpus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has written two collections of stories, published together as Yesterday’s Weather, one book of non-fiction, Making Babies, and six novels, including The Gathering, which won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, The Forgotten Waltz, The Green Road, and Actress. In 2015 she was appointed as the first Laureate for Irish Fiction, and in 2018 she received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TaraShea Nesbit is a writer and teacher. Her second novel, Beheld, is a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and an Indies Next Pick for April 2020. Her first novel, The Wives of Los Alamos, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, and winner of two New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. She is an assistant professor of fiction and nonfiction at Miami University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marie Mutsuki Mockett was born and raised in California to a Japanese mother and American father, and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Her books include American Harvest, Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye, and Picking Bones from Ash. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mary South is a graduate of Northwestern University and the MFA program in fiction at Columbia University. For many years, she has worked with Diane Williams as an editor at the literary journal NOON. Her writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Baffler, The Believer, BOMB, The Collagist, Conjunctions, Electric Literature, Guernica, LARB Quarterly, The New Yorker, NOON, The Offing, The White Review, and Words Without Borders. We discussed her short story collection You Will Never Be Forgotten. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and author of the New York Times bestseller Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, which is being adapted as a television series. In addition to her clinical practice, she writes The Atlantic’s weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column and contributes regularly to The New York Times and many other publications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vanessa Hua is an award-winning, best-selling author and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Her novel, A River of Stars, was named to the Washington Post and NPR’s Best Books of 2018 lists. Her short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, received an Asian/Pacific American Award in Literature and was a finalist for a California Book Award, and was reissued by Counterpoint in 2020. We discussed her collection Deceit and Other Possibilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jane Hirshfield is an award-winning poet, essayist, and translator. She is the author of nine collections of poetry, including Ledger; The Beauty, longlisted for the National Book Award; Come, Thief, a finalist for the PEN USA Poetry Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt, a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Hirshfield is also the author of two collections of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World, and has edited and co-translated four books collecting the work of world poets. In this discussion we talked about Ledger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sue Monk Kidd writes fiction and non-fiction. Her novels include The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair, The Invention of Wings, and The Book of Longings. Some of her non-fiction titles include The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and When the Heart Waits. In this episode we discuss her new novel The Book of Longings Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Nemens is a writer, illustrator, and editor. Her debut novel, The Cactus League, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in February 2020. In 2018, Nemens became the seventh editor of The Paris Review, the nation’s preeminent literary quarterly. In this episode we discuss The Cactus League. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ann Napolitano is the author of the novels Dear Edward, A Good Hard Look, and Within Arm’s Reach. She is also the Associate Editor of One Story literary magazine. She received an MFA from New York University; she has taught fiction writing for Brooklyn College’s MFA program, New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies and for Gotham Writers’ Workshop. In this episode we discuss Dear Edward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anna Solomon is the author of three novels—The Book of V., Leaving Lucy Pear, and The Little Bride—and a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. Her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, One Story, The Boston Globe, Tablet, and elsewhere. Anna is a graduate of Brown University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches writing at Barnard College, Warren Wilson’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, and the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center. In this episode we discuss The Book of V. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan. She studied at Michigan State University and earned an MFA from Bowling Green State University.She is a poet, memoirist, translator, and editor, Forché's books of poetry include: In the Lateness of the World, The Angel of History, which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award; The Country Between Us, which received the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award and was the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets; and Gathering the Tribes, which was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Stanley Kunitz. Her memoir What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistancewas a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award in Nonfiction. In this episode we discuss In the Lateness of the World. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ander Monson is the author of eight books, including the non-fiction book I Will Take the Answer and the short story collection, The Gnome Stories. He edits the magazine DIAGRAM among other projects, and he directs the MFA program at the University of Arizona. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sahar Mustafah, writer and editor is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants and she explores her heritage in her fiction. Her books include Code of the West and The Beauty of Your Face.  In addition to working as a writer, Mustafah also teaches high school English outside of Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julian K. Jarboe is a writer and artist from Massachusetts. They are the recipient of a Writers' Room of Boston Fellowship, a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, an Honorable Mention from the Tiptree Fellowship, and a residency from The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts . They graduated from The Massachusetts College of Art and Design with Academic Honors. Their story collection is called Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Katrin Schumann was born in Germany and grew up in Brooklyn and London. Her writing explores our search for a sense of belonging, and the struggle to define ourselves in the context of our circumstances. Schumann now lives in Boston and Key West, and she is the Program Coordinator of the Key West Literary Seminar and Workshops. She writes fiction and non-fiction. Her novels include This Terrible Beauty and The Forgotten Hours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of the memoir Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection Minor Robberies; and the novel Vacation, winner of the Cabell First Novel Award. Her work appears in Harper’s, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Granta, and elsewhere. She has received three Pushcart Prizes, and a grant from Creative Capital for Innovative Literature. Her newest novel is Barn 8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 P. Carl is a nonfiction writer, playwright, dramaturg and a Distinguished Artist in Residence at Emerson College in Boston. He is also a writer and lecturer on theater, gender, inclusive practices, and innovative models for building community and organizations. He is an accomplished theater artist, most recently the dramaturg and producer on a range of diverse projects including Claudia Rankine's new play, The White Card. Carl is the founder of the online journal HowlRound, and is currently advising the Broadway production of Jagged Little Pill. Carl's memoir is called Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chuck Palahnuik is an American novelist and freelance journalist, who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He is the author of the award-winning novel Fight Club, which also was made into a popular film of the same name. Some of his other works include Choke, Lullaby, “Guts”, and Adjustment Day. His new book about writing is called Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kevin Wilson is the author of two short story collections, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth and Baby You’re Gonna Be Mine, and three novels, The Family Fang, Perfect Little World, and Nothing to See Here. His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, A Public Space, and elsewhere. He lives in Sewanee, Tennessee, with his wife, the poet Leigh Anne Couch, and his sons, Griff and Patch, where he is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Sewanee: The University of the South. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jenny Offill is an American novelist and editor. Her novel Dept. of Speculation was named one of "The 10 Best Books of 2014" by The New York Times Book Review. She writes fiction, non-fiction, and children's books. Her newest novel is called Weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tishani Doshi has published six books of poetry and fiction. Small Days and Nights, her second novel, has been shortlisted for the TATA Best Fiction Award 2019. She discusses this novel on First Draft as well as topics concerning modern day culture and issues in India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Phillips is the debut author of the nationally bestselling novel Disappearing Earth, which is being published in twenty-one languages and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She discusses the novel and writing it on First Draft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jill Ciment was born in Montreal, Canada. She is the author of Small Claims, a collection of short stories and novellas; The Law of Falling Bodies, Teeth of the Dog, The Tattoo Artist, Heroic Measures, and Act of God, novels; and Half a Life, a memoir. She discusses the writing life and the novel The Body in Question in this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luke Geddes is the author of the novel Heart of Junk and the short story collection I am a Magical Teenage Princess. He also makes collage art and lives in Cincinnati. He discusses the novel Heart of Junk and the writing and collecting life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices