Retrospective: Diana Spechler
“One problem a lot of us suffer from is getting partway through something and then dropping it . . . but what if you finished it first, and then made that decision? It could be very surprising. And I’ve found breaking through those times of feeling discouraged has often resulted in my best work.”
Diana Spechler is the author of the novels Skinny and Who by Fire. In this episode of Retrospective, Diana talks about:
- fiction, nonfiction, and where your secrets come out
- dealing with being seen during a very personal book release
- "punch and get out" --lessons learned from storytelling
- keeping ego untangled from the creative process, and
- wrestling projects into submission.
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Diana Spechler is the author of the novels Who By Fire (Harper Perennial, 2008) and Skinny (Harper Perennial, 2011). She has written for the New York Times; GQ; O, The Oprah Magazine; CNN Living; Esquire; New York; Paris Review; Self;Details; the Wall Street Journal; Salon; Slate;Nerve; Southern Review; Glimmer Train Stories; and elsewhere. She is also a four-time Moth StorySLAM winner and has been featured on NPR. She received her MFA degree from the University of Montana and was a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University and the writer-in-residence at Portsmouth Abbey School. A 2012-2013 LABA Fellow, she teaches writing in New York City and for Stanford University's Online Writer's Studio.