First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Leslie Jamison writes fiction, non-fiction, and memoir. Her works include The Empathy Exams, The Gin Closet, The Recovering, and Make it Scream, Make it Burn. She teaches at Columbia University's MFA program concentrating on non-fiction. 

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Amitav Ghosh is the author of nine novels, including Gun Island and the Ibis Trilogy, Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke, and Flood of Fire. He is also the author of six books of non-fiction. He was born on Calcutta and lives in Brooklyn and Goa, India.

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Nick Flynn is the author of twelve books including the memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and most recently the poetry collection, I Will Destroy You.

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Kimi Eisele is the author of the debut novel The Lightest Object in the Universe. She is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tucson, Arizona. She also works for the Southwest Folklife Alliance as a writer and editor.

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Alexandra Fuller is the author of novels, memoirs, non-fiction, essays, and journalism. Her latest memoir is Travel Light, Move Fast, which focuses on the life and death of her father, an Englishman who settled in Africa. Fuller was born in England, grew up in Zimbabwe, and now lives in Wyoming.

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Terry Tempest Williams has written and edited over 20 books, including the essay collection Erosion, Refuge, and The Open Space of Democracy. Her work focuses on the natural world and the intersection between the environment and personal and national politics, spirituality, and family. She teaches at the Harvard Divinity School and lives in rural Utah.

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Petina Gappah is an award-winning Zimbabwean author. Her novels include Out of Darkness, Shining Light and The Book of Memory.  She has also written two short story collections and also writes journalism. She has a law degree and worked as an international trade lawyer. She lives in Harare.

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Alix Ohlin is the author of the novels Dual Citizens and Inside, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.  She lives in Vancouver and is the chair of the Creative Writing Program at University of British Columbia.

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Nathaniel Popkin is the author of three books of non-fiction and the novels, The Year of the Return, Everything is Borrowed, and Lion and Leopard. He also co-edited the anthology Who Will Speak for America?, which he also spoke about with co-editor Stephanie Feldman on First Draft.

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Téa Obreht is the author of the novels Inland and The Tiger’s Wife.  Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading, and has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Atlantic, among many others.  She was born in the former Yugoslavia and now lives and teaches in New York.

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