First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing Mitzi Rapkin

Adelle Waldman is the author of the novels, Help Wanted and The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., which was published in 2013 and was named one of that year’s best books by The New Yorker, The Economist, The New Republic, NPR, Slate, Bookforum, The Guardian and others. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and daughter.
We talked about Adelle’s job working at a big box store, the societal problems of low wage jobs, creating omniscient point of view, Jane Austin, George Eliot, Middlemarch, creating a common enemy in a story, and showing her novel to her former co-workers.
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Sunjeev Sahota is the author of the novels: China Room, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and a finalist for the American Library Association’s Carnegie Medal; The Year of the Runaways, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize and was awarded a European Union Prize for Literature; and Ours are the Streets. In 2013, he was named one of Granta’s twenty Best of Young British Novelists of the decade. He lives in Sheffield, England, with his family.  His new novel is The Spoiled Heart.
We talked about writing socially and politically motivated themes but still making them stories worth reading, unions, the impact of the news and our culture on writing, the strategic reveal of information, creative writing and algebra, and more.
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Steve Almond is the author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His recent books include the novel All the Secrets of the World and WilliamStoner and the Battle for the Inner Life.
For four years, Steve hosted the New York Times Dear Sugar podcast with Cheryl Strayed. He is the recipient of a 2022 NEA grant in fiction, and his short stories have been anthologized in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series.  His new book is Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories.
We talk about craft in creative writing and creative nonfiction, managing conflict in stories, bringing emotion and urgency into writing about the human experience, obsession, plot and causation, and clove cigarettes and the novel Stoner. 
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Anne Lamott is the author of 20 books, which include fiction and nonfiction. Her novels include Hard Laughter, Blue Shoe, and Imperfect Birds. Her nonfiction titles include Operating Instructions, Bird by Bird, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope and the newly released Somehow: Thoughts on Love. She has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship and was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2010.
We talked about love, call and response, writing craft, secrets, the solace and inspiration of reading, novels and nonfiction, Ms. Magazine, and poetry.
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Marie Mutsuki Mockett is the author of the novels Picking Bones from the Ash and The Tree Doctor.  Her nonfiction books include American Harvest, which won the Nebraska Book Award, and Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye, which was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award.  
We talked about writing about nature, sex, loss, cross-cultural influences, Japan, and binaries. 
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Julia Alvarez has written novels including How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, ¡Yo!, In the Name of Salomé, Saving the World, Afterlife, collections of poems including Homecoming, The Other Side/ El Otro Lado, The Woman I Kept to Myself, nonfiction works including Something to Declare, Once Upon A Quinceañera, and A Wedding in Haiti, and numerous books for young readers including the Tía Lola Stories series, Before We Were Free, finding miracles, Return to Sender and Where Do They Go? Her new novel is The Cemetery of Untold Stories.  In 2013, she received the National Medal of Arts from President Obama.

We talked about Julia's childhood, her parents reaction to her fiction, telling stories, aging, creativity, the stories we can pass on, and writing craft.
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