Author name: Graciela Newman

The Best of the Literary Internet, Every Day TODAY: In 1862, Henry David Thoreau dies.  “If there’s any metaphor I would use for the act of writing, it would have to be listening.” Jon Fosse on how writing plays transformed his craft. | Lit Hub Craft Rebecca Kormos on the changing face of nature and

Daniel Noboa, the president of Ecuador, might have saved himself a lot of trouble, if he had only read more Latin American literature. Perhaps he would not have ordered the police to storm the Mexican embassy to arrest former Vice President Jorge Glas, who had been granted asylum there. That unprecedented action—breaching long standing treaties

I was writing a novel about a woman with a terrible mother when I became a mother myself. In stolen early morning sessions, I read my baggy first draft and made notes on everything that wasn’t working. In endless hours with a baby, a toddler, and never-finished housework, I pondered how to fix it. The

The following is from Mauro Javier Cárdenas’s American Abductions. Cárdenas grew up in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and graduated with a degree in Economics from Stanford University. He’s the author of Aphasia (FSG, 2020) and The Revolutionaries Try Again (Coffee House Press, 2016). In 2016 he received a Joseph Henry Jackson Award and in 2017 the Hay

“I won’t show his picture to my relatives until he cuts his hair,” my mother said, an ultimatum I hadn’t imagined. I imagined: “It’s either Quincy or us,” not “It’s either Quincy’s dreadlocks or my relatives.” I was visiting my parents, just me. Her words broke into an otherwise languid afternoon. As she went on

My father was born and raised in Norway, and I’ve spoken the language since living there for seven months when I was 12. In 2003, while visiting family in Oslo, my Dad’s cousin and her husband (who I consider my aunt and uncle) introduced me to the work of Jon Fosse. I read Fosse’s play

Oftentimes, a reader asks what it’s like to publish a memoir with family members in it. How do you seek permission? What do you do when someone in your family protests your storytelling? Do you write it anyway? In this transmission, the radio delivers the questions as something else: Where is your father? Did he

First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully