First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Hundred-Year House, winner of the Chicago Writers Association’s Novel of the Year award, and The Borrower, a Booklist Top Ten Debut which has been translated into eight languages. Her short story collection, Music for Wartime, will appear in June of 2015. Her short fiction was chosen for The Best American Short Stories for four consecutive years (2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008), and appears regularly in journals like Harper’s, Tin House, and New England Review. The recipient of a 2014 NEA fellowship, Makkai has taught at Northwestern University and at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily St. John Mandel was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York. Her fourth novel, Station Eleven, was a 2014 National Book Award Finalist. All four of her novels—previous books were Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, and The Lola Quartet—were Indie Next Picks, and The Singer's Gun was the 2014 winner of the Prix Mystere de la Critique in France. Her short fiction and essays have been anthologized in numerous collections, including Best American Mystery Stories 2013. She is a staff writer for The Millions. She lives in New York City with her husband. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paul Lisicky is the author of five books: The Narrow Door, Unbuilt Projects, The Burning House, Famous Builder, and Lawnboy. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Conjunctions, Ecotone, Fence, The Offing, Ploughshares, Tin House, Unstuck, and in many other magazines and anthologies. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was twice a Fellow. He has taught in the creative writing programs at Cornell University, New York University, Rutgers-Newark, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and elsewhere. He currently teaches in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden, the low residency program at Sierra Nevada College, and at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. He is the editor of StoryQuarterly and serves on the Writing Committee of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ada Limón is the author of four books of poetry, including Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry and one of the Top Ten Poetry Books of the Year by The New York Times. Her other books include Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program, and the 24Pearl Street online program for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She also works as a freelance writer splitting her time between Lexington, Kentucky and Sonoma, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mary Doria Russell has written several novels including Thread of Grace, The Sparrow and Doc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christopher Castellani is the son of Italian immigrants and a native of Wilmington, Delaware. He resides in Boston, where he is the artistic director of Grub Street, one of the country's leading non-profit creative writing centers. He is the author of three critically-acclaimed novels, A Kiss from Maddalena (Algonquin Books, 2003)—winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in 2004— The Saint of Lost Things (Algonquin Books, 2005), a BookSense (IndieBound) Notable Book; and All This Talk of Love (Algonquin, 2013), a New York Times Editors' Choice and finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Literary Award. He is currently working on a new novel. The Art of Perspective: Who Tells the Story a collection of essays on writing, is now available from Graywolf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rachel Cantor's stories have appeared in magazines such as the Paris Review, One Story, Ninth Letter, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Fence, and Volume 1 Brooklyn. They have been anthologized, nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, short-listed by both the O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories, and awarded runner-up Bridport and Graywolf/SLS Prizes. She lives in New York, city of her heart, in the writerly borough of Brooklyn, but have at various points made her home in most U.S. states between Virginia and Vermont. Her novels include A Highly Unlikely Scenario and Good on Paper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah Gerard is the author of the novel Binary Star (Two Dollar Radio), the forthcoming essay collection Sunshine State (Harper Perennial), and two chapbooks, most recently BFF (Guillotine). Her short stories, essays, interviews, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine‘s “The Cut”, The Paris Review Daily, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Bookforum, Joyland, Vice, BOMB Magazine, and other journals, as well as anthologies for Joyland and The Saturday Evening Post. She writes a monthly column on artists' notebooks for Hazlitt and teaches writing in New York City.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft interview with Edan Lepucki, author of California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adam Johnson was born in South Dakota and raised in Arizona. He earned a BA in Journalism from Arizona State University in 1992; a MFA from the writing program at McNeese State University, and a PhD in English from Florida State University in 2000. Johnson teaches creative writing at Stanford University. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, Harper's, Tin House, Granta, and Playboy, as well as The Best American Short Stories. His works include include Emporium, a short-story collection, Fortune Smiles, which won the National Book Awarad, and the novels Parasites Like Us and The Orphan Master's Son, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices