Welcome to Episode 6 – How Darin Strauss Writes!

Over the first month of publishing this podcast, I’ve learned that so many of the authors I’ve interviewed have taken their life story and fused it with the stories they put down on the page. This combination of real and imagined creates something powerful and timeless. I think this combination is what we love in the best of stories; the part of the storytelling that breaks from pure entertainment and into something deeper, more human.

That was the thought I was left with as I prepared to publish this interview with Darin. Darin and I discuss a tragic car accident that happened when he was 18, and how that event has rippled through his life. He writes about this event directly in his memoir “Half a Life,” but we also discuss how this event has woven itself into all of his fiction. If I had to describe this interview with Darin in a single, inarticulate sentence, it’d be to “write from your emotional core.”

But, like always, we also cover off on Darin’s working habits, on how he learned to write, and so much more.

This is a fun episode for me because Darin was my thesis advisor for my MFA at NYU. This is the first of what is coincidently shaping up to be NYU month. The next two interviews after Darin are all NYU faculty that I met in the program that I deeply admire.

Thank you so much to Darin for hosting me at his office in the NYU Creative Writing Townhouse in Greenwich Village. If you are in the New York area, there are always readings and public events at the townhouse that I could not recommend more. It is a place for writers. Through and through.

Okay, without any further ado, here is the interview with Darin Strauss!

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