First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Jill Ciment was born in Montreal, Canada. She is the author of Small Claims, a collection of short stories and novellas; The Law of Falling Bodies, Teeth of the Dog, The Tattoo Artist, Heroic Measures, and Act of God, novels; and Half a Life, a memoir. She discusses the writing life and the novel The Body in Question in this episode.

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Luke Geddes is the author of the novel Heart of Junk and the short story collection I am a Magical Teenage Princess. He also makes collage art and lives in Cincinnati. He discusses the novel Heart of Junk and the writing and collecting life.

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Ethan Rutherford is the author of The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a finalist for the John Leonard 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. Rutherford received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and now teaches Creative Writing at Trinity College. 

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Isabel Allende is the author of more than 23 works of fiction and non-fiction including The House of Spirits, Eva Luna, Of Love and Shadows, and Ripper.  She has sold more than 74 million books, which have been translated into 40 languages. Allende devotes much of her time to human rights causes and after her daughter Paula died, she established a charitable foundation in her honor, which delivers care to girls and women around the world.

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Walter Mosley is a fiction, non-fiction, and screenplay writer. He has written more than 50 books, including the bestselling mystery series featuring detective Easy Rawlins. His latest book is called Elements of Fiction.

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Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl and The Glass Eye. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, the New York Times Modern Love, NewYorker.com and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore and is an assistant professor of English at Towson University. 

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Adrienne Brodeur is the author of the memoir, Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover and Me.  Brodeur founded the fiction magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, where she served as editor in chief from 1996-2002.  In 2005, she became an editor at Harcourt.  She is now the Executive Director of Aspen Words, a literary arts nonprofit and program of the Aspen Institute.  

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Etgar Keret is an Israeli writer of fiction, non-fiction, television and film whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Le Monde, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Paris Review and Zoetrope, among others, and over 40 short movies have been based on his stories, one of which won the American MTV Prize. His feature film Wristcutters also won several international awards.  His short story collection Fly Already won the Sapir Prize for Literature in Israel.  Some of his other titles include The Seven Good Years, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, Four Stories, and A Girl on the Fridge.  Keret's books have been published in 42 languages in 45 countries.

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David Quammen writes fiction and non-fiction with a focus on science and the natural world. He has written more than ten books. His newest book is called The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life.  He is a contributing writer for National Geographic.

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Deborah Levy was born in South Africa and moved to England at the age of nine, where she studied contemporary arts at Dartington College of Arts. In 1989, she published her first collection of short stories, Ophelia and the Great Idea, and a second, Black Vodka, in 2013. Two of her novels, Swimming Home and Hot Milk, were shortlisted for the Booker prize; her latest, The Man Who Saw Everything, was long listed for the Booker prize. She is a playwright, fiction writer, and memoirist. Her new memoir is called The Cost of Living.

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