Suzanne LaGrande  interviews poet David Biespiel.   In addition to founding the Attic Institute, a literary haven and think tank for writers, Mr. Biespiel recently published Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces, a book about the creative process.  In this interview, Mr. Biespiel discusses what attracted him to poetry, why writers need to be good readers and his insights about creativity and the writing process. For more about the Attic Institute and his work, visit: http://atticwritersworkshop.com/ 

Writers on Craft: Jane Hirshfield

Suzanne LaGrande interviews award-winning poet and translator Jane Hirshfield.  Ms. Hirshfield is the author of seven collections of poetry, including After (HarperCollins, 2006); Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Lives of the Heart (1997), The October Palace (1994), Of Gravity & Angels (1988), and Alaya (1982). In 2004, Hirshfield was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets.

Her most recent collection of poetry, entitled Come, Thief (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), was just published this fall. 

In this interview, Suzanne LaGrande talks to Ms. Hirshfield about the process of writing poetry and what she knows now about writing she didn't know when she first started.

Writers on Craft: Ismet Prcic

Ismet Prcic was born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina and immigrated to the United States in 1996. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and was a recipient of a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts award in fiction. He is also a fellow of the 2011 Sundance Institute‘s Screenwriters Lab. In this interview, he talks about the process of writing his first novel,  SHARDS,  his background in theater and how he learned to write in English, his second language.

Writers on Craft: Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan is the author of A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD, THE KEEP, LOOK AT ME, THE INVISIBLE CIRCUS and the story collection EMERALD CITY. In 2011, she won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. In this interview, she talks about how and why she became a writer and some of the stumbling blocks she encountered along the way.