First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Elliot Ackerman served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and is the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. A former White House Fellow, his essays and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Ecotone, among others.  His novels include Green on Blue and Dark at the Crossing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kate Manne is an assistant professor of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. She was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2011 to 2013 and has a PhD in Philosophy from MIT. Her book is called Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joan Silber's first book, the novel Household Words won the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her other works of fiction are In the City, In My Other Life, Lucky Us, Ideas of Heaven, finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize, The Size of the World, finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize in Fiction, and Fools, longlisted for the National Book Award and finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her latest novel is called Improvement.. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alice McDermott is the author of eight novels, including National Book Award winner Charming Billy and The Ninth Hour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

George Saunders is the author of four short story collections, including Tenth of December and the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Han Mattson is the author of The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Egan is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her book, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times book prize. Also a journalist, she has written frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Her newest novel is Manhattan Beach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Longenbach is a poet and critic whose most recent collection of poems, Earthling is a meditation on the ways in which human beings inhabit their knowledge of impending mortality, ranging bemusement to panic.  His most recent critical work, Lyric Knowledge: How Poems Get Made is an account of how English-language poems, ranging from the 8th to the 21st century, are constructed from the most basic elements of their medium (diction, syntax, rhythm, figuration, and so on).  He has also written widely about modern and postmodern poetry, sometimes emphasizing the historicity of poetic language (Wallace Stevens: The Plain Sense of Things) but also exploring the ways in which poems resist their historical location (The Resistance to Poetry). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Matthew Weiner was the writer, creator, executive producer, and director of Mad Men. He also worked as a writer and executive producer on The Sopranos, along with several comedy series, and made his feature film debut in 2014. Weiner's novel is called Heather, The Totality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carmen Maria Machado's debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices