First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Petina Gappah is an award-winning Zimbabwean author. Her novels include Out of Darkness, Shining Light and The Book of Memory.  She has also written two short story collections and also writes journalism. She has a law degree and worked as an international trade lawyer. She lives in Harare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alix Ohlin is the author of the novels Dual Citizens and Inside, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.  She lives in Vancouver and is the chair of the Creative Writing Program at University of British Columbia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nathaniel Popkin is the author of three books of non-fiction and the novels, The Year of the Return, Everything is Borrowed, and Lion and Leopard. He also co-edited the anthology Who Will Speak for America?, which he also spoke about with co-editor Stephanie Feldman on First Draft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Téa Obreht is the author of the novels Inland and The Tiger’s Wife.  Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading, and has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Atlantic, among many others.  She was born in the former Yugoslavia and now lives and teaches in New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caitlin Horrocks is the author of the novel The Vexations and the short story collection This is Not Your City.  She is on the advisory board of the Kenyon Review and teaches fiction at Grand Valley State University and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.  Subscribe to First Draft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Helen Phillips, author of The Need, has written five books, including the short story collections Some Possible Solutions and And Yet They Were Happy and the novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat. Her work has been featured on Selected Shorts, at the Brooklyn Museum, and in the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and Tin House, among others. She is an associate professor at Brooklyn College.  Subscribe to First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Katie Arnold is a contributing editor and former managing editor at Outside Magazine, where she worked on staff for 12 years. She created and launched the popular Raising Rippers column, about bringing up adventurous kids, which appears monthly on Outside Online. Her memoir is called Running Home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kevin McIlvoy has taught creative writing for over twenty-five years. He was Editor in Chief of the national literary magazine, Puerto del Sol at New Mexico State University, and has served on the Board of Directors of two national writing organizations, Council for Literary Magazines & Presses and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. His published works include A Waltz, The Fifth Station, Little Peg, Hyssop, The Complete History of New Mexico, 57 Octaves Below Middle C, and At The Gate of All Wonder.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dinaw Mengestu is the award-winning author All Our Names, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, and How to Read the Air. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and of Columbia University’s M.F.A. program in fiction and the recipient of a 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation and a 20 Under 40 award from The New Yorker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peg Alford Pursell is the author of A Girl Goes into the Forest and Show her a Flower, a Bird, A Shadow. Peg lives in Northern California and is the founder and director of WTAW Press and of Why There Are Words, a national literary reading series and program of WTAW Press. She is a member of The Writers Grotto. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices