Lydia Millet discovered that she loved the desert when she attended the University of Arizona’s MFA program. And though she didn’t stay in the program, she returned to live in the desert a decade later—a wild, expansive setting fitting for both her fiction and her environmental advocacy. Millet is the author of six novels and, most … Read more

Richard Russo was born and raised in the “Glove Cities,” Johnstown and Gloversville, New York, which would become the backdrop for many of his novels. In a 2007 interview with NPR, he said, “I’ve always had the distinct feeling that there was a ghost version of myself still living back in that place that’s still so … Read more

PRAGEETA SHARMA IS THE DIRECTOR of the MFA program at the University of Montana and author of three poetry collections, Bliss to Fill, The Opening Question, and Infamous Landscapes. When asked about a guiding notion for The Opening Question, she answered, “I started with the idea of a kind of unabashed confrontation with disappointment and worked towards a way of reeling … Read more

JESS WALTER FOLLOWED A CONVOLUTED PATH into the literary mainstream: He was a newspaper reporter who became a nonfiction author who became a ghostwriter who became a mystery novelist who became a literary novelist who also writes screenplays. But no matter the genre,  Walter’s work is stamped with vivid watermarks—prose that blends rapid-fire rants with unerring rhythm, … Read more