453 episodes

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, non-fiction, essay, and poetry writers. First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing highlights the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. This weekly show hosted by Mitzi Rapkin is a celebration of creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing Mitzi Rapkin

    • Arts
    • 4.8 • 154 Ratings

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, non-fiction, essay, and poetry writers. First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing highlights the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. This weekly show hosted by Mitzi Rapkin is a celebration of creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.

    Debra Spark

    Debra Spark

    Debra Spark is the award-winning author of five novels, including Unknown Caller, which was picked for Maine’s statewide summer READ ME program.  She has also published two collections of short stories; and two books of essays on fiction writing called And Then Something Happened and Curious Attractions.   Her book reviews, short fiction, articles, op-eds, and essays have appeared in Agni, American Scholar, AWP Writers’ Chronicle, and the Boston Globe among others.  Her new novel is Discipline.  She is the Zacamy Professor of English at Colby College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

    We talked about the value of art, if beauty can save people, the real and fictional boarding school in Maine that used abusive techniques on teenagers, the role of women in the art world usually being in service to men, parenting, and creating parallel lines in a narrative piece of creative writing.
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    • 52 min
    Téa Obreht

    Téa Obreht

    Téa Obreht is the author of the novel The Tiger’s Wife, which won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction, and was a 2011 National Book Award finalist and an international bestseller.  Her novel Inland won the BRLA Southwest Book Award and the Ballard Prize.  Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading, and has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, Vogue, Esquire and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many others. She currently lives in Wyoming.  Her new novel is called The Morningside.

    We talked about writing during the pandemic in a fever dream, confronting trauma in writing, besting your therapist, folktales, the world our children will inherit, and crafting a novel from feverish draft to structured finished product.
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    • 1 hr 4 min
    DIane Seuss (Returns)

    DIane Seuss (Returns)

    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.
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    • 1 hr 1 min
    Sloane Crosley

    Sloane Crosley

    Sloane Crosley is the author of The New York Times bestselling essay collections, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, How Did You Get This Number, and Look Alive Out There and the bestselling novels, The Clasp and Cult Classic. She served as editor of The Best American Travel Writing series and is featured in The Library of America's 50 Funniest American Writers, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading and others. She is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Her new memoir is called Grief Is for People.

    We talked about structuring her memoir around the stages of grief, how she knew she was at the end of the book, being close to an event to write about it, that doctors have the best lines for writers to steal, observing the world, and how grief is not over just because the book is.
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    • 57 min
    Temim Fruchter

    Temim Fruchter

    Temim Fruchter is a queer nonbinary Jewish writer who lives in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland and is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Vermont Studio Center, and a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award. She is co-host of Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn. Her debut novel is City of Laughter.
    We talked about origin stories for families and books, queer sensibility, growing up Modern Orthodox Jew, unraveling the mysterious stories of our lives, and pushing boundaries in life and creative writing.
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    • 59 min
    Leslie Jamison (Returns Again)

    Leslie Jamison (Returns Again)

    Leslie Jamison is the author of two essay collections— The Empathy Exams and Make It Scream, Make It Burn—a critical memoir, The Recovering, and a novel, The Gin Closet. She’s written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Oxford American, A Public Space, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Believer.   Her new book is called Splinters. Jamison teaches at the Columbia University MFA program, where she directs the nonfiction concentration.
    We talked about how structure can be the answer to figuring out how to get a story on the page, the process of writing versus vetting it for the public, how time and perspective can bring spaciousness, the many selves that we exist as, and Google searches as confessions.
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    • 1 hr 5 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
154 Ratings

154 Ratings

Ellie9876Hd ,

Favorite author interview podcast

I’ve tried many interview podcasts, but I keep coming back to this one. The interviewer really does her research, and strikes such a friendly tone with the authors, that I usually hear insights that you don’t get from other interviews. She also regularly interviews literary heavy hitters and prize winners, which I personally prefer to brand new authors.

hsifekj ,

A treat

This podcast is such a treat. The dialogue between Mitzi and the authors is so thoughtful and insightful. The process of writing has become so fascinating to me (a reader), and this podcast is a beautiful window into the craft of writing.

Richard SoCal ,

Great guests, great questions

Mitzi has a pitch perfect interview presence and she asks the questions I wish I could ask in addition to clearly putting a lot of thought and effort into the interviews and honoring the authors’ work. I just became a supporter!

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