First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

First Draft - Elizabeth Alexander

Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate. Her memoir, The Light of the World

First Draft - Roberta Recchia

Roberta Rossella Recchia was born in Rome and  lived for a time in Lille, France, where she earned a master’s degree in international relations and cultures. She worked f

First Draft - James Salter

James Salter grew up in New York City and was a career officer and Air Force pilot until his mid-thirties, when the success of his first novel, The Hunters(1957), led to

First Draft - Jess Row

Jess Row is the author of the novels The New Earth and Your Face in Mine as well as a collection of essays, White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination.  H

First Draft - Richard Russo

Richard Russo is the author of 11 novels, including most recently, Under the Falls, Somebody’s Fool, Chances Are . . . , Everybody’s Fool, and That Old Cape Magic; two co

First Draft - Michael Cunningham (Returns Again)

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 taugh

First Draft - Rachel Eliza Griffiths (Returns)

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, multimedia artist, memoirist and novelist. Her literary and visual work has been widely published in magazines, journals, and anthologie

First Draft - Kevin Powers

Kevin Powers’ books, including The Yellow Birds, A Line in the Sand, A Shout in the Ruins and poetry collection Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, have been t

First Draft - Laura Dave

Laura Dave is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me, Eight Hundred Grapes and six other novels. Her books have been published in thirty-ni

First Draft - Emeline Atwood

Emeline Atwood graduated from the Michener Center for Writers in 2023. She writes fiction and poetry and is a recipient of the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize, the Louis Begley Pr

First Draft - Emily Rapp Black

Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir; The Still Point of the Turning World, which was a New York Times bestseller, Editor’s Pick, and a finalist for t

First Draft - Ben Fountain (Returns Again)

Ben Fountain’s work has received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the Barnes & N

First Draft - Zinzi Clemmons

Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. Her debut novel, What We Lose was named “Debut Novel of the Year” by Vogue, an

First Draft - Ruth Ozeki

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. Her new short story collection is called The Typing Lady and Other Fictions. Her novels — My Year of Meats ,

First Draft - Emma Straub

Emma Straub is the New York Times-bestselling author of seven books for adults: the novels American Fantasy, This Time Tomorrow, All Adults Here, The Vacationers, Modern

First Draft - Lily King (Returns)

Lily King is the award-winning author of six novels. Her most recent novel is Heart the Lover. She has also published a collection of short stories, Five Tuesdays in Wint

First Draft 12th Anniversary Best Of - Ross Gay

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of

First Draft - Ramona Ausubel

Ramona Ausubel is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of the novel No One Is Here Except All of Us and the short stor

First Draft - Hafeez Lakhani

Hafeez Lakhani was born in Hyderabad, India and raised in suburban South Florida. His novel is called Abundance. His fiction and essays have appeared in Crazyhorse, Expos

First Draft - Tom Perrotta

Tom Perrotta is the bestselling author of eleven works of fiction, including Election and Little Children, both of which were made into Oscar-nominated films, and The Lef