Margot Livesey has published ten novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona, The House on Fortune Street, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Mercury, and The Boy in the Field, and The Road from Belhaven. The Hidden Machinery, a collection of essays on writing, was published by Tin House Books in 2017. Livesey is currently teaching at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives with her husband, a painter, in Cambridge, MA, and goes back to London and Scotland whenever she can.

We talked about growing up in Scotland, quiet novels, traveling in her mind when she couldn't in person during Covid, small town farm life, solace in animals and the natural world, secret sorrows, and the supernatural.

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Kaveh Akbar's poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry,and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine. In His novel is called Martyr! He is also the Poetry Editor of The Nation.  Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at the University of Iowa and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson.

We talked about the transition to novel writing from poetry, transcendence in poetry, not looking away from the terrors of the world, addiction and rehabilitation, the messiness of life, and questions about goodness.

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Ilyon Woo is the is the New York Times best-selling author of Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom, one of the New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2023” and People Magazine’s “Top Ten Books of 2023. Woo is also the author of The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times.  Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and The New York Times.  She has a PhD in English from Columbia University. 

We talked about the unfathomable but real cruelty of slavery, institutional slavery as the foundation for the building of this country, the indelible spirits of Ellen and William Craft, researching and brining historic events to life in creative non-fiction, the fugitive slave act, how cinema influences her writing, and writing vows.

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Jill McCorkle is the author of four short story collections and seven novels including the New York Timesbestseller Life After Life.  Five of her books have been New York Times Notable books and her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories.  She has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Garden and Gun, The Atlantic, and other publications. She is currently a faculty member at the Bennington College Writing Seminars and is affiliated with the MFA program at North Carolina State University.  Her new short story collection is called Old Crimes.

We talked about nostalgia, regret, epigraphs, Tennessee Williams, moments of grace in fiction, blindspots, when the reader knows more than the characters in stories, creating suspense, and linked stories.

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Vanessa Chan is the author of the novel The Storm We Made and the story collection The Ugliest Babies in the World.  Her other work has been published in Vogue, Esquire, and more. Chan grew up in Malaysia and is now based mostly in Brooklyn.

We talked about researching her novel, family stories, the horror of WW II in Malaysia, young boys building the railroad near the border, war crimes, colonialism, spies, her favorite pastime when not writing, finding the title of the novel, and the difficulty of writing such a tough story.

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Antoine Wilson is the author of the novel Mouth to Mouth, which was featured on Barack Obama’s 2022 Summer Reading List.  His other novels include The Interloper and Panorama City. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Quarterly West, and Best New American Voices, among other publications. He is a contributing editor at A Public Space.

This was recorded live at the 2023 Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago. We talked about what it means to be a good person, first drafts, writing what you want to read, the intricacies of visual and literary art, and remembering the vibes of great books.

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Buzzy Jackson has a Ph.D. in History from UC Berkeley and is a member of the National Book Critics’ Circle. Her debut novel is To Die Beautiful. She is currently working on a new novel based on a historical American true crime.  This was recorded live at Paonia Books in Paonia, Colorado. We talked about World War II and Nazi resistance fighters in the Netherlands, particularly the real life Hannie Schaft, the main character of To Die Beautiful, how writing this book impacted Buzzy's activism, writing painful scenes in the book, and more.

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David James Duncan is the author of the novels The River Why, The Brothers K, and Sun House, the story collection River Teeth, and the nonfiction collection and National Book Award finalist, My Story as Told by Water, and the best-selling collection of “churchless sermons," God Laughs & Plays.  He lives on a trout stream in Missoula, Montana.

We talked about his writing process, how writing a novel over 16 changed him, activism, solitude and creativity.

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Paul Harding is the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Tinkers.  His other novels include Enon and This Other Eden, which was short listed for the Booker Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award. He is director of the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook University, and lives on Long Island, New York.

We talked about mystery in the writing process and the content of the creative writing project, the world offering itself to you and through you via your art, writing about Maine and history, teaching writing, the Old Testament, and the title This Other Eden.

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Michael Cunningham is a novelist, screenwriter, and educator. His novel The Hours received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1999. He has taught at Columbia University and Brooklyn College. He is currently a professor in the practice at Yale University. His new novel is called Day.

We talked about writing during the pandemic, throwing away a novel he wasn't happy with, the challenge of writing the middle of a novel, and getting the voice of children right.

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