Lauren Groff, "Brawler: Stories" (Riverhead, 2026)

Feb 27, 2026

Lauren Groff, a three-time National Book Award finalist and bestselling novelist, discusses her new story collection Brawler and her beginnings at Amherst. She talks about assembling stories over years, deciding when a collection coheres, and the role of her agent Bill Clegg. Groff also reads from her work, reflects on motherhood in fiction, and previews projects she’s currently writing.

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ANECDOTE

How One College Class Changed Her Path

Lauren Groff began writing fiction at Amherst after shifting from formal poetry when Judy Frank's intro to fiction class introduced her to living writers.
That class opened her sense of literature as a viable art form and changed her trajectory from poet to fiction writer.

INSIGHT

Short Stories Arrive Like Poems

Groff thinks of short stories like poems: they arrive as a glimmer and gestate for years before demanding to be written.
She lets subconscious associations and life experiences add density until a story 'comes to the fore' and insists on being put on the page.

ADVICE

Only Assemble A Collection When Stories Converse

Wait to assemble a collection until stories 'speak to each other' and you can order them to create underlying conversation.
Groff had ~18 finished stories but chose those that created thematic juxtapositions rather than a hodgepodge.

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Acclaimed TC contributor Lauren Groff speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her new story collection, Brawler, out this month from Riverhead, and her origins as a writer at Amherst College, where The Common is based. She also discusses how a story collection comes together over many years, how working with her longtime agent Bill Clegg has shaped her work, and what she’s working on now and next. Groff’s work appears most often in The New Yorker these days, but The Common published a story of hers in Issue 01, more than 15 years ago.

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won the Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2024 she was named one of the “TIME 100 most influential people.” Groff’s work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, where she and her husband run an independent bookstore, The Lynx.

Read Lauren Groff’s story “Exquisite Corpse” in The Common here.

Learn more about Brawler and order it here.

Find out more here.

The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine here, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook.

Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her 2025 debut novel All That Life Can Afford was a Reese’s Book Club pick, and her work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column, the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction.

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