Bestselling fiction writer Curtis Sittenfeld joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about her new collection of stories, Show Don’t Tell. Sittenfeld discusses the title story, which depicts graduate students in creative writing competing for funding, and its connections to her time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, when that practice was common. She also considers how President Trump’s attacks on DEI reveal some people’s true natures, and what it means to write about “the hypocrisy of being a person.” Finally, she explains why she thinks of time as a plot twist, and reflects on returning to the protagonist of her debut novel, Prep, Lee Fiora, who reappears in the new collection’s final story, which features her thirtieth high school reunion. Sittenfeld reads from Show Don’t Tell.

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This podcast is produced by Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan.

Selected Readings:

Curtis Sittenfeld

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