First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

George Saunders is the author of twelve books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for best work of fiction in English, and was a finalist for the Golden Man Booker, in which one Booker winner was selected to represent each decade, from the fifty years since the Prize’s inception. His stories have appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1992. The short story collection Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the inaugural Folio Prize in 2013 (for the best work of fiction in English) and the Story Prize (best short story collection).
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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.
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Daniyal Mueenuddin was brought up in Lahore, Pakistan, and Elroy, Wisconsin. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Yale Law School, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, and The Best American Short Stories 2008, selected by Salman Rushdie. His collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. For a number of years he practiced law in New York. He now divides his time between Oslo, Norway, and his farm in Pakistan’s South Punjab. His new novel is called This is Where the Serpent Lives.
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Ashley Shelby’s debut novel, South Pole Station, received praise from The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio and others.  It was also named a New York Times Editor's Pick and an Indie Next Pick, as well as a Best Book of 2017 by Shelf Awareness, and was awarded the 2017 Lascaux Prize in Fiction. Her 2024 story collection, Honeymoons in Temporary Locations is currently shortlisted for the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in Slate, The New York Times Book Review, LitHub, Salon, Audubon, and other outlets. She is also the author of Red River Rising: The Anatomy of a Flood and the Survival of an American City.
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Benjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up in Merseyside. Seascraper is his fifth novel. His previous works have been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Book Prize, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the RSL Encore Award, the CWA Gold Dagger Award and the European Union Prize for Literature. In 2014, he won France’s Prix du Roman Fnac. He is a senior lecturer in creative writing at King’s College, London, and lives in Surrey with his wife and sons.
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