I'm a Writer But

Emma Copley Eisenberg discusses her debut novel, Housemates, Philadelphia, BODIES, the spectrum of Ottessa Moshfegh to Grace Paley, structure, road trips, the historical figures who inspired the novel, and more!

Emma Copley Eisenberg is the author of the novel Housemates and the narrative nonfiction book The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, which was named a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for an Edgar Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Anthony Award, among other honors. Her fiction has appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, VQR, American Short Fiction, and other publications. Raised in New York City, she lives in Philadelphia, where she co-founded Blue Stoop, a community hub for the literary arts.

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Craig Willse discusses his debut novel, Providence, as well as writing family systems, grief, the many times he rewrote the book, layering in tension, rewarding the reader with sex, the danger of projection, and more!

Craig Willse is a teacher and freelance editor living in Los Angeles. A 2021 Lambda Literary Fellow, Craig has recent work in HAD, Joyland, and Fence. His first novel, Providence, is out now from Union Square. He is also the author of The Value of Homelessness (University of Minnesota Press) and has a PhD in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center.

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Today, live from Exile in Bookville in Chicago, Shze-Hui Tjoa discusses her debut memoir, The Story Game, as well as excavating her childhood from buried trauma, crafting her sister into a listener character in the book, pushing past profound dissatisfaction, the submission process, making space for being corny, and more! Plus audience questions!

Shze-Hui Tjoa is a writer from Singapore who lives in the UK. Her debut, The Story Game (Tin House Books, 2024), is a genre-bending memoir about using storytelling to overcome the memory lapses of c-PTSD and recover personal identity. 

Shze-Hui writes about and beyond herself - and is particularly interested in creative nonfiction that challenges formal conventions to speak the deepest possible truth to power. She has upcoming interviews or features in BOMB Magazine, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, The Millions, Poets & Writers magazine, Between the Covers podcast, and elsewhere. Her work has been listed as notable in three successive issues of The Best American Essays (2021-23). 

Shze-Hui is currently a nonfiction editor at Sundog Lit, where she works to uplift writers from different backgrounds and bring them into conversation. Her career has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop (USA), Ceriph Mentorship Programme (Singapore), Disquiet International (Portugal), and VONA Voices (USA), among other organizations.

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Morgan Talty live-comments on his own Goodreads review, then discusses his debut novel, Fire Exit, as well as why he enjoys interacting with his online reviewers, the expectations people bring to indigenous fiction, being an objective reader of his own work, building emotion around an idea, balancing darkness with tenderness, Alice Munro, writing from the perspective of a white man, and more!

Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation. His debut short story collection, Night of the Living Rez, won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the American Academy of Arts & Letters Sue Kaufman Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the New England Book Award, the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Honor, and was a Finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the 2023 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Prize, and The Story Prize. His writing has appeared in The Georgia Review, Granta, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Talty is an assistant professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and Contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Levant, Maine.

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We're live from the beautiful Fine Arts Building in downtown Chicago at Lindsay's favorite bookstore, Exile in Bookville! Kimberly King Parsons talks about her debut novel, We Were the Universe, a mother’s right to disassociate, drugs, horny moms, “a quick squirt,” her painstaking sentence-making, Garielle Lutz, her favorite music, deserving her novel’s ending and more! Plus audience questions!

Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the forthcoming novel We Were the Universe and the short story collection Black Light, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for “Foxes,” a story published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children.

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Ferdia Lennon discusses the historical background of his debut novel, Glorious Exploits, skepticism and the divine, reading the classics, coming back to writing, using contemporary Irish dialect to write a novel set in the Peloponnesian War, and more!

Ferdia Lennon was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a Libyan father. He holds a BA in History and Classics from University College Dublin and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. His short stories have appeared in publications such as the Irish Times and the Stinging Fly. In 2019 and 2021, he received Literature Bursary Awards from the Arts Council of Ireland. After spending many years in Paris, he now lives in Norwich with his wife and son. Glorious Exploits is his debut novel.

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Lucas Mann discusses his essay collection, Attachments, as well as Brad Pitt, being a dad but not a dumb dad, intentions vs. writing, fooling himself into writing, the usefulness of delusion, writing as excavation, Dr. Becky, his bookstore in Providence, Riffraff, and more!

Lucas Mann is the author of the new collection, Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances, as well as Captive Audience: On Love and Reality Television, Lord Fear: A Memoir, and Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere. He teaches creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and lives in Providence, RI with his family, where they own Riffraff Bookstore and Bar.

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Temim Fruchter discusses her debut novel, City of Laughter, the Jewish folklore and queer joy that informed it, the circular/non-linear structure to be found in Jewish folklore and in her novel, writing in different timelines and generations, hosting Pete’s Reading Series, ultrafemme queerness, and more!

Temim Fruchter is a queer nonbinary anti-Zionist Jewish writer who lives in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland, and is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Vermont Studio Center, and a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. She is co-host of Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn. Her debut novel, CITY OF LAUGHTER, a New York Times Editors’ Pick, is out now on Grove Atlantic.

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Alexandra Tanner talks about her debut novel, WORRY, along with sibling dynamics, current slang (we don’t know what it is), allowing for characters to have free will, writing a harsh yet recognizable mother character, editing a “fragmentary, formless book” into the shape it has today, Amy Klobuchar (IYKYK), the nihilism in her favorite narratives, and more!

Alexandra Tanner is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. She is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and The Center for Fiction. Her writing appears in The New York Times Book Review, Gawker, and Jewish Currents, among other outlets. Worry is her first novel.

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Amy Shearn discusses her new novel, Dear Edna Sloane, as well as unplugging, being a woman writer of a certain age, the notion of creating content vs. making art, working with an indie press vs. a bigger publisher, her “saucy” upcoming novel, and more!

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here, as well as two forthcoming novels. She has worked as an editor at Medium, JSTOR, Conde Nast, and other organizations, and has taught creative writing at NYU, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Gotham Writers Workshops, Catapult, Story Studio Chicago, The Resort LIC, and the Yale Writers' Workshop. Amy's work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Coastal Living. Amy has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her two children. You can find her at amyshearnwrites.com or @amyshearn.

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