First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Erika Krouse writes fiction and nonfiction.   Her book Tell me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigationwon the Colorado Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and the 2023 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.  Erika’s novel, Contenders, was a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her previous short story co

Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, a New York Times Critics’ and NPR Best Book of the Year, a finalist for the Southern Book Prize, and longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award; the novels True Love and Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times First Fiction Prize; a c

Charlotte Wood is the author of seven novels and three books of non-fiction. Her novel Stone Yard Devotional was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. Her previous books include The Luminous Solution, a book of essays on the creative process; the international bestseller, The Weekend; and The Natural Way of Things whi

Paul Theroux is the author of many highly acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Great Railway Bazaar, The Mosquito Coast, Riding the Iron Rooster, and Mr. Bones: Twenty Stories.   In 2015, Paul Theroux was awarded a Royal Medal from the Royal Geographical Society for “the encouragement of geographica

Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of the novels Thrust, The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Award's Ken Kesey Award for Fiction as well as the Reader's Choice Award, the novel Dora: A Headcase, a critical book on war and narrative, Allegories Of Violence, a

Sarah Chihaya is a book critic, essayist, and editor. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, New York magazine, The Atlantic, and The Yale Review, among other places, and she is the co-author of The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism. She has taught at Pr