The Lives of Writers

Andrew Porter [Host: Aaron Burch]

Episode Summary

Aaron Burch interviews Andrew Porter. Topics include: writing longhand, teaching, rejection, Andrew's new story collection THE DISAPPEARED, nostalgia and sentimentality, gut punches, quiet-loud-quiet, and more.

Episode Notes

On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Aaron Burch interviews Andrew Porter.

Andrew Porter is the author of the novel In Between Days and two short story collections, The Theory of Light and Matter and, most recently, The Disappeared. Porter’s short stories have appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The Missouri Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. 

Aaron Burch is the author of the essay collection A Kind of In-Between and editor of How to Write a Novel: An Anthology of 20 Craft Essays About Writing, None of Which Ever Mention Writing, both from Autofocus Books. He's also the author of several other books, including the novel, Year of the Buffalo. He is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and the co-editor of WAS (Words & Sports) and HAD. 

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PART ONE, topics include:

-- finishing up summer

-- writing longhand

-- teaching intro to creative writing

-- discovering writing as an undergrad

-- relationships with rejection

-- early jobs and time in an MFA

-- Twitter as a kind of MFA

-- the decision to teach

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PART TWO, topics include:

-- Andrew's new story collection, THE DISAPPEARED

-- guilt about not writing much during early fatherhood

-- writing the first story in the collection

-- spinning a classic story in a new direction

-- nostalgia as life and writing theme

-- the line of sentimentality

-- stories as self-contained moments in time

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PART THREE, topics include:

-- short story gut punch moments

-- knowing when a long story isn't a novel

-- mixing the longer and short forms in a collection

-- story collection order as album order

-- quiet-loud-quiet

-- work on a next novel

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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.

The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.