First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

First Draft - Kristin Koval

Kristin Koval is a former lawyer who always wanted to be a writer but initially wandered down other paths. She attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Georgetown University and Columbia Law School. She lives in Boulder, Colorado and Park City, Utah with her husband, two sons and two Great Danes. Her novel is called Penitence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft - Robert Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane is a British writer internationally known for his writing on nature, people, and place.  His best-selling books include Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind.  They have been translated into more than 30 languages and won many prizes around the world and have been adapted for film, music, theatre, radio, and dance.  He has also written operas, plays and films including river and mountain.  In 2017 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the EM Forester Prize for literature.  Macfarlane lives in Cambridge England where he is a fellow at Emmanual College, Cambridge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft - Andrew Porter (returns)

Andrew Porter is the author of four books, including the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the novel In Between Days, which was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, an IndieBound “Indie Next” selection, and the San Antonio Express News’s “Fictional Work of the Year,” the short story collection The Disappeared, which was longlisted for The Story Prize and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and the novel The Imagined Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft - André Alexis

André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. His novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His internationally acclaimed debut, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. In 2017, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction.  His new collection is Other Worlds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft - 12th Anniversary Best of - Salar Abdoh

Salar Abdoh is the author of Out of Mesopotamia, Tehran at Twilight, Opium, and The Poet Game, and editor and translator of the celebrated crime collection, Tehran Noir.  He divides his time between New York City and Tehran, Iran. He is a professor at the City University of New York’s City College campus in Harlem, where he teaches in the English Department’s MFA program and also directs undergraduate creative writing. His new novel is called A Nearby Country Called Love. We talked about the influences on his creativity, masculinity, life in Iran, gender and gayness, writing stories close to home, and finding love and belonging. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices