Leslie Jamison was born in Washington DC and grew up in Los Angeles. Since then, she's lived in Iowa, Nicaragua, New Haven, and New York. She's worked as a baker, an office temp, an innkeeper, a tutor, and a medical actor. Every one of these was a world; they're still in her. Jamison has written a novel, The Gin Closet, and a collection of essays, The Empathy Exams. Her work has appeared or will appear in places like Harper's, Oxford American, A Public Space, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The B...
Nov 10, 2015•32 min
Elliott Holt was born and raised in Washington, D.C. A former copywriter who worked at advertising agencies in Moscow, London, and New York, Holt attended the MFA program at Brooklyn College (where she won the Himan Brown award) at night while working full time in Manhattan during the day. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Salon, Guernica, Kenyon Review online, The Millions, Bellevue Literary Review, The Pushcart Prize XXXV (2011 anthology) and elsewhere. In addition to winni...
Nov 10, 2015•33 min
Bonnie Jo Campbell grew up on a small Michigan farm with her mother and four siblings in a house her grandfather Herlihy built in the shape of an H. She learned to castrate small pigs, milk Jersey cows, and, when she was snowed in with chocolate, butter, and vanilla, to make remarkable chocolate candy. When she left home for the University of Chicago to study philosophy, her mother rented out her room. She has since hitchhiked across the U.S. and Canada, scaled the Swiss alps on her bicycle, and...
Nov 09, 2015•35 min
Alan Lightman is the author of six novels, including Einstein’s Dreams, which was an international best seller and The Diagnosis, a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the author of two collections of essays and several books on science. A theoretical physicist as well as a writer, he has served on the faculties of Harvard and MIT, where he was the first person to receive a dual faculty appointment in science and the humanities. He lives in the Boston area. Learn more about your ad ...
Nov 09, 2015•32 min
Molly Antopol’s debut story collection, The UnAmericans was longlisted for the 2014 National Book Award, named a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the National Jewish Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. It was chosen as a “Best Book of 2014” by over a dozen venues and will be published in seven countries. She teaches at Stanford Uni...
Nov 08, 2015•32 min
Maria Semple is the author of This One Is Mine and Where’d You Go Bernadette. Before turning to fiction, she wrote for Mad About You, Ellen, and Arrested Development. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker. She lives in Seattle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 07, 2015•33 min
Russell Banks is the author of more than a dozen works, which include poetry, short stories, novels and essays. His novels Cloudsplitter and Continental Drift were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction were made into feature films. His latest work is a short story collection called A Permanent Member of the Family. Banks is the recipient of numerous literary awards, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Keene, New York and Miami, Flor...
Nov 07, 2015•32 min
Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours(winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award & Pulitzer Prize), Specimen Days, and By Nightfall, as well as the non-fiction book, Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown. His newest novel is, The Snow Queen. He lives in New York, and teaches at Yale University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 07, 2015•32 min
Anthony Doerr is the author of The Shell Collector, About Grace, Four Seasons in Rome, Memory Wall, and the new novel All the Light We Cannot See. Doerr’s fiction has won four O. Henry Prizes and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. He has won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA ...
Nov 07, 2015•32 min
Elizabeth Gilbert was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1969, and grew up on a small family Christmas tree farm. She attended New York University, where she studied political science by day and worked on her short stories by night. After college, she spent several years traveling around the country, working in bars, diners and ranches, collecting experiences to transform into fiction. Her books include Eat, Pray, Love, Pilgrims, Committed, The Last American Man and most recently The Signature of...
Nov 07, 2015•32 min
Alice McDermott is the author of seven novels including National Book Award Winner Charming Billy and three Pulitzer Prize finalists: After This, That Night and At Weddings and Wakes. She is Johns Hopkins University's Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities. She has a BA from SUNY Oswego and an MA from University of New Hampshire. Her new novel is Someone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 07, 2015•32 min
