First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Miriam Toews is the author of Women Talking, Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness, All My Puny Sorrows, The Flying Troutmans, and Irma Voth, and one work of non-fiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is a winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers Trust Marian Engel/Timothy Findley Award. She lives in Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She is also the author of the young adult novel Belzhar. Wolitzer lives in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joanne Ramos was born in the Philippines and moved to Wisconsin when she was six. She graduated with a BA from Princeton University. After working in investment banking and private-equity investing for several years, she became a staff writer at The Economist.  The Farm is her first novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novels Lost and Wanted, The Newlyweds, and The Dissident, and the story collection Lucky Girls, which won the PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Molly Dektar is the author of The Ash Family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CJ Hauser teaches creative writing and literature at Colgate University. She is the author of the novel The From-Aways and her fiction has appeared in Tin House, Narrative Magazine, TriQuarterly, Esquire, Third Coast, and The Kenyon Review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Erika Meitner was born and raised in Queens and Long Island, New York. She is the author of five books of poems: Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore, Ideal Cities, Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls, Copia, and Holy Moly Carry Me. In addition to teaching creative writing at UVA, UW-Madison, and UC-Santa Cruz, she has worked as a dating columnist, an office temp, a Hebrew school instructor, a computer programmer, a systems consultant, a lifeguard, a documentary film production assistant, and a middle school teacher in the New York City public school system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cara Robertson is the author of The Trial of Lizzie Borden.  She is an attorney whose writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, the Raleigh News and Observer, and the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities. She was educated at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford Law School. A former Supreme Court law clerk, she served as a legal adviser to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford Law School Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Means is the author of several short story collections including Instructions for a Funeral, The Secret Goldfish, and The Spot and the novel, Hystopia.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Susan Orlean is a staff writer at The New Yorker and her books include Rin Tin Tin, The Orchid Thief, and The Library Book, among others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices