First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Ruben Reyes Jr. is the son of two Salvadoran immigrants. He completed his MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is a graduate of Harvard College where he studied History and Literature and Latinx Studies. His debut story collection, There is a Rio Grande in Heaven, was a finalist for The Story Prize, and longlisted for the the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the New American Voices Award. Archive of Unknown Universes is his first novel. Originally from Southern California, he lives in Queens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Megha Majumdar is the author of the novel A Guardian and a Thief, which is Oprah’s Book Club selection for October 2025. The novel is a finalist for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize and has been longlisted for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal. Her first book, the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paula Saunders is a graduate of the Syracuse University creative writing program and was awarded a postgraduate Albert Schweitzer Fellowship at the State University of New York at Albany, under Schweitzer chair Toni Morrison. Her first book, The Distance Home, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction 2018 First Novel Prize and named as one of The Best Books of 2018 by REAL SIMPLE. She lives in California with her husband. They have two grown daughters. Her new novel is called Starting from Here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Diane Seuss is the author of the poetry collections Frank: Sonnets, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl; Four-Legged Girl, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open; and It Blows You Hollow. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Georgia Review, Brevity, Able Muse, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and the Missouri Review, as well as The Best American Poetry 2014. She was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English at Colorado College in 2012, and she has taught at Kalamazoo College since 1988. Her new poetry collection is Modern Poetry. We talked about aging, John Keats, dogs, romance, music, objectivity, grief, coldness, and the snarling, flaming bitch of poetry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tracy K. Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, memoirist, editor, translator and librettist. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-2019. Smith is the author of five poetry collections: Such Color: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2022 New England Book Award; Wade in the Water, which was awarded the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; Life on Mars, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; Duende, winner of the 2006 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets; and The Body’s Question, which received the 2003 Cave Canem Prize. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in nonfiction. She is the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stewart O’Nan’s award-winning fiction includes Snow Angels, A Prayer for the Dying, Last Night at the Lobster, and Emily, Alone. His 2007 novel, Last Night at the Lobster, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize. Granta named him one of America’s Best Young Novelists. His new novel is Evensong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Angela Flournoy’s debut novel The Turner House was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the VCU Cabell First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and an NAACP Image Award. Her new novel, The Wilderness, was long listed for the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker among others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jonathan Parks-Ramage is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and journalist. He is also the author of the novel Yes, Daddy named one of the best queer books of 2021 by Entertainment Weekly, NBC News, The Advocate, Lambda Literary, Bustle, Goodreads and more. He is the Co-Creator of the Big Gay Jamboree, an Off-Broadway musical, nominated for five Lucille Lor-tell Awards, three Outer Critics Circle Awards, and four Drama Desk Awards. His new book It’s Not the End of the World was selected by The New York Times Style Magazine as a pick for Best Queer Summer Fiction.​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben Okri is a poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, anthologist, aphorist, and playwright. He has also written film scripts. His works have won numerous national and international prizes, including the Booker Prize for Fiction. His newest book is a short story collection called Prayer for the Living. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jaquira Díaz was raised between Humacao, Fajardo, Puerto Rico and Miami Beach. She is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, an Indie Next Pick, a Library Reads pick, and finalist for the B&N Discover Prize. Her stories, poems, and essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Best American Experimental Writing, and The Pushcart Prize anthology. Her debut novel, This Is the Only Kingdom, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize. She lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Orner is the author of seven acclaimed books including Maggie Brown & Others, Love and Shame and Love, Esther Stories, finalist for the Pen/ Hemingway Award, and Am I Alone Here?, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Best American Stories, and been awarded four Pushcart Prizes. A former Guggenheim fellow and recipient of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Orner is chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College. He lives with his family in Vermont, where he’s also a volunteer firefighter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jane Hamilton lives, works, and writes in an orchard farmhouse in Wisconsin. Her short stories have appeared in Harper's magazine. Her first novel, The Book of Ruth, won the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel and was a selection of the Oprah Book Club. Her second novel, A Map of the World, was an international bestseller. Her new novel is The Phoebe Variations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ada Limón is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Prize; The Carrying, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. She is the author of two picture books and was the editor of the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. She served as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jason Mott is the author of two poetry collections, including We Call This Thing Between Us Love and five novels including The Returned, which was a New York Times bestseller and was made into a TV series that ran for two seasons. His novel Hell of a Book was named the winner of the National Book Award for fiction. He has a BFA in fiction and an MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His new novel is called People Like Us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the fourth in the 12 for 12 Best of the last dozen years of First Draft in honor of the 12th anniversary. Abby Geni is the author of the novels The Wildlands and The Lightkeepers and the short story collections The Last Animal and The Body Farm. Her books have been translated into seven languages and have won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the Chicago Review of Books Awards, among other honors. Geni is a faculty member at StoryStudio Chicago and frequent Visiting Associate Professor of Fiction at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. We talked about emotional intelligence, teaching creative writing, science and investigation, the perfect murder (fictional that is), following a story to see where it goes, writing from a place of mystery, and moments that make you cry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and CEO and Founder of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit organization that is radically transforming the access to literature in prisons through the installation of Freedom Libraries in prisons across this country. For more than twenty-years, he has used his poetry and essays to explore the world of prison and the effects of violence and incarceration on American society. He is the author of a memoir called A Question of Freedom, which chronicles his years in prison where he was charged and sentenced as an adult at the age of 16. His collections of poetry include the best-selling Felon and the newly released Doggerel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nini Berndt is a graduate of the University of Florida's MFA program in Fiction. Her first novel is There Are Reasons for This. She teaches writing at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, where she lives with her wife and son. Evanthia Bromiley is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the recipient of scholarships from the Aspen Institute, a Lighthouse Fellowship, a Lisel Mueller scholarship, and Elizabeth George and Carol Houck-Smith awards. She is the 2025 Grace Paley Fellow for Under the Volcano international residency in Tepoztlán, Mexico. Her short fiction and creative nonfiction can be found in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Five Points, and elsewhere. Crown is her debut novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caleb Gayle is an award-winning journalist who writes about race and identity and is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. His writing has been recognized by the Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award, the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship, the Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellowship, the New America Fellowship, and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, among others. In addition to writing, Gayle serves as an Associate Professor at Northeastern University. His nonfiction book is called Black Moses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Betsy Lerner is the author of the recently released novel, Shred Sisters. She is also the author The Bridge Ladies, The Forest for the Trees and Food and Loathing. With Temple Grandin, she is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns and Abstractions. She received an MFA from Columbia University in Poetry where she was selected as one of PEN’s Emerging Writers. She also received the Tony Godwin Publishing Prize for Editors. After working as an editor for 15 years, she became an agent and is currently a partner with Dunow, Carlson and Lerner Literary Agency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tracy K. Smith is the author of five poetry collections, including Such Color: New and Selected Poems; Wade in the Water, winner of the 2019 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and shortlisted for the 2018 T. S. Eliot Prize. Her debut collection, The Body’s Question, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize in 2002. Her second book, Duende, won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her collection Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She also edited the anthology American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rachel Cockerell was born and raised in London, the sixth of seven children. Melting Point is her first nonfiction book. Her research has taken her to Texas, Ohio, New York, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joy Harjo was the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. She is the author of more than ten books of poetry including Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years and the highly acclaimed An American Sunrise, which was a 2020 Oklahoma Book Award Winner. Her new book is Washing My Mother’s Body: A Ceremony for Grief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Princess Joy L. Perry is the recipient of a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship and a winner of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award. Her short stories have appeared in All About Skin, African American Review, and Kweli Journal. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia. Her new novel is This Here is Love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ed Park is the author of the novels Same Bed Different Dreams, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Personal Days, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Bookforum, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He is a founding editor of The Believer and the former literary editor of The Village Voice and has worked in newspapers and book publishing. His debut story collection is An Oral History of Atlantis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Torrey Peters is the author of the novel Detransition, Baby, which won the 2021 PEN/Hemingway award for debut fiction and was named a Best Book of the Century by the New York Times. Her second book of short stories is called Stag Dance. Torrey is an amateur sauna builder, rides a pink motorcycle, and splits her time between Brooklyn and Santa Marta, Colombia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices