First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Tom Barbash is the author of the novels The Dakota Winters and The Last Good Chance, a collection of short stories Stay Up With Me, and the bestselling nonfiction work On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick & 9/11: A Story of Loss & Renewal.

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Leif Enger was raised in Osakis, Minnesota, and worked as a reporter and producer for Minnesota Public Radio for nearly twenty years.  His newest novel is called Virgil Wander.

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R.O. Kwon’s first novel is called The Incendiaries. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vice, BuzzFeed, Noon, Time, Electric Literature, Playboy, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere.

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Cai Emmons is the author of the novels Weather Woman, His Mother's Son, and The Stylist. Emmons has taught at various colleges and universities, including the University of Southern California. Since 2002 she has been teaching fiction and screenwriting at the University of Oregon.

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Sarah Stone’s new novel, Hungry Ghost Theater, was published by WTAW Press in October 2018. Her first novel is called The True Sources of the Nile. She teaches creative writing for the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and Stanford Continuing Studies.

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Karen Bender is the author of short story collections The New Order and Refund, the novels A Town of Empty Rooms and Like Normal People and is co-editor of the anthology Choice.

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Christina Dalcher is the author of VOX.

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Daniel Mason is a physician and author of The Piano Tuner, A Far Country, and The Winter Soldier.  He is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry, and his research and teaching interests include the subjective experience of mental illness and the influence of literature, history, and culture on the practice of medicine.

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Beth Macy is a journalist and author.  Her latest book, Dopesick, focuses on one of America's epicenters for the opioid crisis.  The book follows distressed communities in Central Appalachia to wealthy suburbs.  Her other books include Factory Man and Truevine.

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Matthew Thomas's New York Times-bestselling novel We Are Not Ourselves was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the John Gardner Fiction Book Award; longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Folio Prize; named a Notable Book of the year by the New York Times; named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple, and others; and named one of Janet Maslin’s ten favorite books of the year in the New York Times.

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