S231.
A Good Book Is Never Late
Saturday, February 10, 2024
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
The pressure on writers to be "productive" can feel relentless, both from within and without. This panel is the antidote: a love song to the long game from five fiction and nonfiction writers whose books took years to finish. We'll talk candidly about how time transforms structure, voice, and research; how to sustain the slow burn; how not-writing can be essential to writing; managing anxiety, ageism, and self-doubt; and learning to love the duration for the sake of the art.
Participants
Chelsey Johnson is the author of the novel Stray City. Her writing has appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, NPR's Selected Shorts, and elsewhere. She received an MFA from Iowa and a Stegner Fellowship and directs the Northern Arizona University MFA.
Vu Tran is the author of the novel, Dragonfish. He has received a Whiting Award and an NEA Fellowship, and his work has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Mysteries, and Ploughshares. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago.
Ricardo Nuila is a practicing doctor, teacher, and writer. His nonfiction has appeared in the New Yorker and VQR, and his fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories. A former Yaddo, MacDowell, and Dobie Ranch fellow, his first book on safety net hospitals will be published by Scribner.
Nami Mun’s Miles from Nowhere, a national bestseller, has won the Whiting Award, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, a Pushcart Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers and the Asian American Literary Award. She teaches at Loyola University Chicago.
Peyton Marshall graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her first novel, Goodhouse, came out from FSG in 2014 and was a finalist for the Dashiell Hammett Prize. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, and A Public Space. She was awarded an NEA Prose Writing Fellowship for 2022–23.
