On Writers | Work in Progress

FSG | Work in progress

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09.24.20

Illuminating the Promise and the Paradox of the American Story

On Writers

Illuminating the Promise and the Paradox of the American Story

In awaiting the publication of Jack, the latest novel in Marilynne Robinson's beloved Gilead series, we asked some of FSG's younger writers to say a few words about how Marilynne's fiction has resonated in their own lives and work. The depth and acuity...

On The Enduring Resonance of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead series

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02.27.20

Unfinished Business

On Writers

Unfinished Business

I sometimes think I was born reading...I can’t remember the time when I didn’t have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me. In Vivian Gornick's new book, Unfinished Business, she brings us a celebration of passionate reading, of...

Vivian Gornick & Alexandra Schwartz In Conversation

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12.05.19

Didion’s Mirror

On Writers

Didion’s Mirror

On a visit home last year, on a late-night walk, my mother and I were talking books. We were still getting used to the idea that I would be publishing one myself, and something about the combination of this news and a mother’s impulse...

Jessi Jezewska Stevens

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10.25.19

Eve Langley, or Oscar Wilde

On Writers

Eve Langley, or Oscar Wilde

The Pea-Pickers is a classic Australian novel, in the sense that it remains in print seventy years after its release, but also in the sense that it is fascinating and timeless. It was written by Eve Langley in the late 1930s, but it is...

Shaun Prescott On Australia’s Poet of Portent

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09.27.19

Robert Giroux’s Unfinished Memoir

On Writers

Robert Giroux’s Unfinished Memoir

Editor and publisher Robert Giroux worked with some of the most esteemed writers of his day, including Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Bernard Malamud, and many other giants of twentieth-century literature. In 1964, the company’s name was changed to Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He was...

Chapter One

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04.26.19

The Bones of Language

On Writers

The Bones of Language

I’m a little in love with the idea that a poem is an occasion for two people to share a trouble, whatever the outcome of that trouble might be. So, I would say that the listener I would want is a person with whom...

Katie Peterson

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03.28.19

19 FSG Writers on the Women Who Inspire Them

On Writers

19 FSG Writers on the Women Who Inspire Them

This week’s edition of Work in Progress celebrates Women’s History Month. We asked nineteen of our authors to write about the women who influenced their writing, style, or path as an artist, and their varied responses speak to the way a person or work...

Celebrating Women's History Month

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01.31.19

The Catholic School

On Writers

The Catholic School

“The Catholic School is one of the foundational works of the literature of the twenty-first century. It is a great book by a great writer. It is also a major sociological and theological meditation, which raises questions that we hope won’t be forgotten.” —Natale...

Edoardo Albinati With a Note From Jonathan Galassi

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01.31.19

In Place of Alternate Realities

On Writers

In Place of Alternate Realities

It is spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year, as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is...

Rivka Galchen and Geraldine Harcourt In Conversation

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01.25.19

The Love of Fate

On Writers

The Love of Fate

Hiking with Nietzsche is a tale of John Kaag's two philosophical journeys—one as an introspective young man of nineteen, the other seventeen years later as a husband and father. Kaag sets off for the Swiss peaks above Sils Maria where Nietzsche wrote his...

John Kaag and Mark Greif In Conversation

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11.14.18

On the Challenges of Translating Seventeen by Hideo Yokoyama

On Writers

On the Challenges of Translating Seventeen by Hideo Yokoyama

Hideo Yokohama’s masterpiece Seventeen is set in a fictional newspaper company covering the real-life 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines jumbo jet in a mountainous region of Japan. The accident happened before I moved to Japan, but it is a major (well, infamous)...

Louise Heal Kawai

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11.09.18

Being Both

On Writers

Being Both

In the fall of 2013 I received a submission from one of the smartest, loveliest agents I know, Katherine Fausset at Curtis Brown. At first glance it seemed unlikely—a posthumous story collection from a little known writer. But then I saw her name: Lucia...

On Discovering the World of Lucia Berlin Emily Bell

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11.09.18

Welcome Home

On Writers

Welcome Home

“I’ve lived so many places it’s ridiculous . . . and because I moved so much, place is very, very important to me. I’m always looking . . . looking for home.” —Lucia Berlin, interview (2003) The first writer I ever watched at work was my...

Lucia Berlin From a Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters

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09.27.18

A Burning Soul

On Writers

A Burning Soul

Just weeks before his death in late 2016, Leonard Cohen said he was ready for the end to come—he just needed a bit more time to put his last book in order. The Flame is this final work from the revered poet and...

Adam Cohen On Leonard Cohen

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06.01.18

Roth Unbound

On Writers

Roth Unbound

Philip Roth, one of the most renowned writers of our time, passed away last week at the age of 85 in Manhattan. We are extremely honored to have published some of his work. The following is an excerpt from Roth Unbound, Claudia Roth...

Claudia Roth Pierpont

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04.20.17

James Wright

On Writers

James Wright

Of the many resources I’ve mined in researching James Wright: A Life in Poetry, the most vivid have been recordings of Wright’s readings over the course of two decades, when he was a vital public figure in the world of American poetry. A...

Jonathan Blunk His First and Last Readings

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04.05.17

With a Perfect Contempt

On Writers

With a Perfect Contempt

In trying to sum up the experience of having spent the last ten years editing the poetry of Marianne Moore, most recently in the New Collected Poems, I think of a recent classroom interaction I had. Toward the end of a course on...

Heather Cass White On Editing Marianne Moore

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04.04.17

On the Cover

On Writers

On the Cover

Two items from the poet John Ashbery’s private collections appear on the cover for The Songs We Know Best. One is a yellow card from the early 1940s that his father, Chester "Chet" Ashbery, designed to advertise goods sold by the Ashbery...

Karin Roffman The Songs We Know Best

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03.09.17

Carrèrisms, Carrèrists, Carrère

On Writers

Carrèrisms, Carrèrists, Carrère

It’s Emmanuel Carrère who stopped me from writing this article. Right at the moment when I’d planned to knuckle down and sort through the disparate ideas that had occurred to me during the four years I’d spent translating his works, Farrar, Straus and Giroux—which...

John Lambert Translator's Note

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02.16.17

Keep Moving Toward the Sea

On Writers

Keep Moving Toward the Sea

I met Bill Knott in late 1968, or in early 1969, at William Corbett’s house, a gathering place for poets in Boston’s South End. I’d read Knott’s highly acclaimed first book, The Naomi Poems, from Big Table, in the spring of 1968. It was...

Thomas Lux I Am Flying Into Myself

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