First Draft - Ayana Mathis

First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing

Ayana Mathis’s first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, was a New York Times Bestseller, second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0, a 2013 New York Times Notable Book, NPR Best Book of 2013, and was long listed for the Dublin Literary Award and nominated for Hurston/Wright Foundation's Legacy Award. Mathis’s nonfiction has been published in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Financial Times, Rolling Stone, Guernica and Glamour. She currently teaches at Hunter College’s MFA Program. Her new novel is The Unsettled.

We talked about the title, her main character's agency, her focus on character and story, and myth among other topics.

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