I'm a Writer But

Today, V. V. Ganeshananthan talks to us about writing a novel set in the Sri Lankan civil war, the role that medicine played in the life of her character, building tension, writing non-chronologically to start and then switching to chronological, and more! 

V. V. Ganeshananthan is the author of the novels Brotherless Night and Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. She co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast on Literary Hub, which is about the intersection of literature and the news. 

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Today, Alia Trabucco Zerán talks to us about the unique structure of her new book, the discomfort of writing about these women and their crimes, the backlash against the book, the decision to include graphic images in the book, making a place for fiction in academic work, her new novel (out on Riverhead in 2024), and more! 

Alia Trabucco Zerán was born in Chile in 1983. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for a master’s in creative writing in Spanish at New York University, where she wrote her debut novel La resta (The Remainder). La resta won the prize for Best Unpublished Literary Work awarded by the Consejo Nacional del Libro de Chile, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International in 2019. It has been translated into seven languages. When Women Kill was recently awarded the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. She lives between Santiago and London. 

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Today, Christine Sneed talks to us about leaning on the absurdity of working in an office for her new satirical novel, her long career, almost giving up, deciding to place her latest books herself, figuring out how to hype her work, teaching part-time, and more!

Christine Sneed is the author of the novels Please Be Advised: A Novel in Memos, Little Known Facts, and Paris, He Said, and the story collections Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry and The Virginity of Famous Men(Bloomsbury USA & UK). She is also the editor of the short fiction anthology, Love in the Time of Time's Up (Tortoise Books). Her seventh book, Direct Sunlight, a short story collection, will be published in June 2023 (Northwestern University Press). 

Karin-Lin Greenberg's book is Vanished.

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Coco Picard talks to us about the decade she spent working on her new book, using constraints, locating the reader, opening her book with a "magical transformation," writing a funny book about dying, and more!

Coco Picard is a writer, cartoonist, and curator. She is the author of The Healing Circle (August, 2022; Red Hen Press), which is the winner of the Red Hen Press Women's Prose Prize, and of two graphic novels, Meowsers (2022) and The Chronicles of Fortune (2017), which was nominated for a DiNKy Award. Art criticism and comics have otherwise appeared under the name Caroline Picard in Artforum, Hyperallergic, The Paris Review, and Seven Stories Press, among others. She started the Green Lantern Press in 2005, earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute and was a Bookends Fellow at Stony Brook University.

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Today, Elisa Gabbert talks to us about conceptualizing her audience(s), the difference for her between writing prose and poetry, “borrowing greatness” from other authors as well as Reddit and Wikipedia, “pseudo-sequiturs,” titles, and more! 

Elisa Gabbert is the author of six collections of poetry, essays, and criticism: Normal Distance (Soft Skull); The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays, out now from FSG Originals and Atlantic UK; The Word Pretty (Black Ocean, 2018); L’Heure Bleue, or the Judy Poems (Black Ocean, 2016); The Self Unstable (Black Ocean, 2013); and The French Exit (Birds LLC, 2010). The Unreality of Memory and The Word Pretty were both named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and The Self Unstable was chosen by the New Yorker as one of the best books of 2013. She writes the On Poetry column for the New York Times, and her work has appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Believer, The New York Times Magazine and Book Review, the New York Review of Books, the Guardian Long Read, the London Review of Books, A Public Space, The Nation, the Paris Review Daily, American Poetry Review, and many other venues. Her next collection of nonfiction, Any Person Is the Only Self, will be out in 2023 from FSG.

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Today, Christina Cooke (BROUGHTUPSY, Jan. 2024) talks to us about spending 11 years writing her debut novel, working on it at the Iowa Writers Workshop and MacDowell, the stamina of being a writer, all the “life stuff,” the ego death of going on submission, and more! 

Christina Cooke’s writing has previously appeared in PRISM international, The Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner, Epiphany: A Literary Journal, and elsewhere. A MacDowell Fellow and 2022 Journey Prize winner, she holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of New Brunswick and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Born in Jamaica, Christina is now a Canadian citizen who lives and writes in New York City. 

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Today Steve Almond (All the Secrets of the World) talks to us about scorpions, taking three decades to finish his first novel, how he came to write a “social novel,” writing from the perspective of a teenaged Latina, Nancy Reagan, and a man who lusts after teenaged girls while maintaining the book’s authenticity, and more! 

Steve Almond is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His essays and reviews have been published in venues ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Ploughshares to Poets & Writers, and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Mysteries, and Best American Erotica. Almond is the recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He cohosted the Dear Sugars podcast with his pal Cheryl Strayed for four years, and teaches Creative Writing at the Neiman Fellowship at Harvard and Wesleyan. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts, with his family and his anxiety.  

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Today, Andrew Bomback talks to us about using his experience as a formerly angry father to write a cultural history on modern parenting, moving from writing fiction to nonfiction, the pressure cooker of parenthood today, looking for answers in parenting books, and more! 

Andrew Bomback is Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the author of DOCTOR (2018) and LONG DAYS, SHORT YEARS (2022). His essays have appeared in the Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. 

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Today Deborah Shapiro (CONSOLATION) talks to us about her new novel, writing about grief, the journey to her decision to self-publish this amazing, gorgeous, “quiet” book, working with Bookmobile, the power of simple covers, and more! 

Deborah Shapiro is the author of the novels The Sun in Your Eyes (a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice), The Summer Demands, and Consolation. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, Sight Unseen, Chicago Magazine, Literary Hub, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband and son in Chicago.

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Today, Sara Flemington (EGG ISLAND) talks to us about her debut novel, moving it from short story to longer narrative, its path to publication, the lit scene in Toronto, writing mantras, and more! 

Sara Flemington is the author of the novel, Egg Island. Her work has previously appeared in publications such as subTerrain, The Humber Literary Review, The Feathertale Review, and Paper Darts, among others. Sara lives in Toronto, Canada. 

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