First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Eley Williams is the author of the novel The Liar's Dictionary, the short story collection Attrib. and Other Stories, and the poetry collection Frit. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway University of London. Her critical and creative work has appeared in the London Review of Books, the TLS and the Guardian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Te-Ping Chen is a fiction writer and journalist whose debut collection of short stories is called Land of Big Numbers. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Granta and Tin House. She is a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Philadelphia who was previously based in Beijing and Hong Kong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben Okri is a poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, anthologist, aphorist, and playwright. He has also written film scripts. His works have won numerous national and international prizes, including the Booker Prize for Fiction. His newest book is a short story collection called Prayer for the Living. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mateo Askaripour is the author of the novel Black Buck. He aims to empower people of color to seize the opportunities for advancement, not matter the obstacle. He was a 2018 Rhode Island Writers Colony writer in residence and his writing has appeared in Entrepreneur, LitHub, Catapult, The Rumpus, Medium and elsewhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Ho Davies’s latest book is A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself. His previous novel, The Fortunes, a New York Times Notable Book, won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the Chautauqua Prize, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His first novel, The Welsh Girl, a London Times Best Seller, was long-listed for the Booker Prize. He has also published two short story collections, The Ugliest House in the World (winner of the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize, and the Oregon Book Award) and Equal Love (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a New York Times Notable Book). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Wunderlich was born in Winona, Minnesota and grew up in rural Fountain City, Wisconsin. He attended Concordia College’s Institut für Deutsche Studien, and later the University of Wisconsin from which he received a BA in German Literature and English. Wunderlich earned a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University’s School of the Arts Writing Division where he studied poetry with J.D. McClatchy, William Matthews and Lucie Brock-Broido, among others, and translation with William Weaver and Frank MacShane. His poetry collections include The Anchorage, Voluntary Servitude, The Earth Avails, and God of Nothingness.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jamie Harrison, who has lived in Montana with her family for more than thirty years, has worked as a caterer, a gardener, and an editor, and is the author of six novels: The Center of Everything, The Widow Nash and the four Jules Clement/Blue Deer mysteries, slated to be reissued soon by Counterpoint Press: The Edge of the Crazies, Going Local, An Unfortunate Prairie Occurrence, and Blue Deer Thaw. She was awarded the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Book Award for The Widow Nash and was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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