May 11, 2016
Dana Spiotta is the guest. Her new novel, Innocents and Others, is available now from Scribner. It is the official May selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.
This is Dana's second appearance on the podcast. (Her first appearance, Episode 31, can be heard via Otherppl Premium.) I spoke with her by phone. She was at home in Syracuse, New York. We talked a lot about movies, which feature prominently in her fiction and especially in Innocents. And towards the end of our conversation, we discussed her writing process—how it tends to take her five years to write a novel, how she drafts, how she edits, and so on. It's illuminating. And that's really a good word for Dana Spiotta, as both a person and a writer. She's illuminating.
There isn't much of a monologue today—I just get right to the main event—but for those of you who can't live without my rambling, I talk a bit at the end of the show.