First Draft - Bret Anthony Johnston

First Draft - Bret Anthony Johnston

From First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing by Mitzi Rapkin

March 2, 2026 · 1h 9m

About this episode

Bret Anthony Johnston discusses his writing journey and new short story collection, Encounters with Unexpected Animals.

Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the award-winning short story collection Corpus Christi, the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This and the editor of Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His short stories have been published in anthologized in New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best; The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Short Stories. His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review. He is the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. His new short story collection is Encounters with Unexpected Animals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People in this episode

Guest: Bret Anthony Johnston

Topics covered

  • writing
  • short stories
  • literature
  • creative writing
  • publishing

Keywords

  • Corpus Christi
  • We Burn Daylight
  • Remember Me Like This
  • Naming the World
  • New Stories from the South
  • The O. Henry Prize Stories
  • The Best American Short Stories
  • The New Yorker
  • The Atlantic
  • The Paris Review

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: First Draft, Corpus Christi, We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer, New Stories from the South, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, Encounters with Unexpected Animals

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