Marisa Silver⁠ is the author of the novels At Last, The Mysteries; Little Nothing, which was a New York Times Editor's Choice; Mary Coin, which was a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Southern California Independent Bookseller's Award; The God of War, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and No Direction Home. Her story collections include Alone With You and Babe in Paradise, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. 

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Devon O’Neil is a freelance journalist based in Breckenridge, Colorado, and the author of The Way Out: A true story of survival in the Heart of the Rockies, published in November 2025 by HarperOne. In the past he has worked as a daily newspaperman, a staff writer for ESPN.com, and a correspondent for Outside magazine. O’Neil’s stories have been anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing and noted in The Best American Sports Writing, and twice have been finalists for national awards in civic journalism. 

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Michael Kleber-Diggs is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. He was born and raised in Kansas and now makes his home in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His debut poetry collection, Worldly Things, won the Max Ritvo Poetry prize and will be published by Milkweed Editions in June, 2021. Michael teaches creative writing through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and at colleges and high schools in Minnesota.

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Elizabeth McCracken is the author of nine books: Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry, The Giant’s House, Niagara Falls All Over Again, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Thunderstruck & Other Stories, Bowlaway, The Souvenir Museum, The Hero of This Book, and A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction. She’s received grants and fellowships from United States Artists, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Liguria Study Center, the American Academy in Berlin, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

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Ruben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants. He completed his MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is a graduate of Harvard College where he studied History and Literature and Latinx Studies. His debut story collection, There is a Rio Grande in Heaven, was a finalist for The Story Prize, and longlisted for the the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the New American Voices Award. Archive of Unknown Universes is his first novel. Originally from Southern California, he lives in Queens.

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Megha Majumdar is the author of the novel A Guardian and a Thief, which is Oprah’s Book Club selection for October 2025. The novel is a finalist for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize and has been longlisted for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal. Her first book, the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal.

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Paula Saunders is a graduate of the Syracuse University creative writing program and was awarded a postgraduate Albert Schweitzer Fellowship at the State University of New York at Albany, under Schweitzer chair Toni Morrison. Her first book, The Distance Home, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction 2018 First Novel Prize and named as one of The Best Books of 2018 by REAL SIMPLE. She lives in California with her husband. They have two grown daughters.  Her new novel is called Starting from Here.

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Diane Seuss is the author of the poetry collections Frank: Sonnets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl; Four-Legged Girl, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open; and It Blows You Hollow. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Georgia Review, Brevity, Able Muse, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and the Missouri Review, as well as The Best American Poetry 2014. She was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Colorado College in 2012, and she has taught at Kalamazoo College since 1988. Her new poetry collection is Modern Poetry.

We talked about aging, John Keats, dogs,  romance, music, objectivity, grief, coldness, and the snarling, flaming bitch of poetry.

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Tracy K. Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, memoirist, editor, translator and librettist. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-2019. Smith is the author of five poetry collections: Such Color: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2022 New England Book Award; Wade in the Water, which was awarded the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; Life on Mars, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; Duende, winner of the 2006 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets; and The Body’s Question, which received the 2003 Cave Canem Prize. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in nonfiction. She is the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

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Stewart O’Nan’s award-winning fiction includes Snow Angels, A Prayer for the Dying, Last Night at the Lobster, and Emily, Alone. His 2007 novel, Last Night at the Lobster, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize. Granta named him one of America’s Best Young Novelists.  His new novel is Evensong. 

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