First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

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 translated into more than a dozen languages. He has been a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the Prix littéraire du Monde prix étranger, and the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine, among other recognitions. He was a James A. Michener Fellow in Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin from 2009-2012 and later held a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. Powers is a U.S. Army veteran of the war in Iraq. His new novel is Children of the Wild.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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-nine languages and have been chosen by Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club, Indie Next, Book of the Month Club, The Richard and Judy Book Club, Best of Amazon, and Best of Apple Books. The Last Thing He Told Me was chosen as the Goodreads Mystery & Thriller of the Year for 2021. Her new novel, The First Time I Saw Him is a sequel to The Last Thing He Told Me, both of which are series on Apple TV.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Prize, the Roger Conant Hatch Prize for Lyric Poetry, and the Le Baron Russell Briggs Fiction Prize. She lives in Austin, Texas. Her novel is A Real Animal.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 the PEN-USA Award; Sanctuary, a New York Times Editor’s Pick; and Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg. Emily Rapp Black has received awards and fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation; the Jentel Arts Foundation; the Corporation of Yaddo; the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a winter writing fellow among other awards. She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California-Riverside, where she also teaches in the School of Medicine. Her new nonfiction book is called I Would Die If I Were You: Notes on Art and Truthtelling.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the PEN-Cerulli Award for Excellence in Sports Writing, and a Whiting Writers Award, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His works include Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Beautiful Country Burn Again, Devil Makes Three, and Rasputin Swims the Potomac.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices