Status: Not Accepted

The difficulties of a first book is an open secret in the literary world—we aim for publication, then a review, then an award. It can feel like an endlessly moving target. Each of these authors has had works published in a variety of genres (fiction, memoir, poetry), each with notable successes. And yet the stress surrounding that first book rarely abates. In this panel, we’ll discuss the fine line between hustling and obsession, working and struggling—and how we learned to muddle through.