First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

First Draft - Lori Ostlund

Lori Ostlund is the author of After the Parade, which was a Barnes & Noble Discover pick and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the Ferro-Grumley Award. Her story collection, The Bigness of the World, won the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the California Book Award for First Fiction, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and was a Lambda Finalist and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her third book is called Are You Happy? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft - Ethan Rutherford (Returns Again)

  Ethan Rutherford’s new novel is The North Sun or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther. He is the author of two story collections—Farthest South and The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories—and for these works has been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a finalist for the John Leonard Prize and CLMP’s Firecracker Award, received honorable mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and was the winner of a Minnesota Book Award. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and now teaches Creative Writing at Trinity College. We talked about his novel North Sun, whaling, mythology, Peter and the Wolf, musicality in writing, Alaska, and going back to ideas he thought he was finished with. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft - Shelley Read

Shelley Read’s debut novel, Go as a River, is an international bestseller that has been translated into thirty-four languages and is in development for film with the Mazur Kaplan Company. Winner of the High Plains Book Award for Fiction, the Reading the West Book Award for Debut Fiction, and le Prix de l’Union Interalliée, Go as a River is also a Sunday Times bestseller, Goodreads Choice Award finalist, Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Debut Fiction, Indie Next Pick, and a Colorado Public Radio Books We Love selection, among other national and international accolades. Go As A River has been highlighted in the New York Times Book Review, Sunday Times, Scientific American, Real Simple, Kirkus Reviews (starred review), Denver Post, London Independent, Alta Magazine, 5280, Zibby Mag, and many more publications around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft: Madeleine Thien

Madeleine Thien is the author of four books, including Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. She lives in Montreal.  Her new novel is The Book of Records. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First Draft - Lauren Groff (Returns)

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and The New YorkTimes–bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work regularly appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Her work has been translated into thirty-six languages. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices