Mary-Beth Hughes and Lauren Acampora

Mary-Beth Hughes, author of The Loved Ones talks to Nicole Nelson about finding her way into her novel, using sensory detail to further the narrative, and drawing from her earlier career as a modern dancer (with the Merce Cunningham studio in New York) to tell her stories. Then Lauren Acampora, author of The Wonder Garden, talks about how her false start with a novel led to this book of inter-connected short stories that she had a blast writing, how growing up in the suburbs and later choosing to live there as an adult has influenced the tales she is drawn to, and how she finds the humor in reactions from readers who don't read flap copy, thanks to a blog post by Rebecca Makkai about online reader reviews.

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(Broadcast date: June 10, 2015)

Rebecca Makkai and Stuart Rojstaczer

Rebecca Makkai, author of The Hundred-Year House, talks with Nicole Nelson about telling a story backwards, writing humor, and the Google problem for fiction. We also talked about her Ploughshares blog, where she covers everything from an alternative MFA program she envisions and why it's prudent to steer clear of movie quotes and song lyrics in fiction. Stuart Rojstaczer, author of The Mathematician's Shiva, talks about balancing tragedy with comedy, the similarities between writing an academic paper and writing a novel, and how the third time, novel-writingwise, can be the charm.

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(Broadcast date: September 17, 2014)