Writers are quite accustomed to answering questions about their work in terms of craft—the stylistic choices involved in establishing mood and pacing, modulating sentence structure and rhythm and shaping plot and characterization to make a short story or a novel what it is. Less discussed is a writer’s work in terms of work—the concurrent careers that often not only provide financial support but also inform the writing.

Join this evening moderated by BMI Shearing Fellow Mary South, where prominent fiction writers Chaya Bhuvaneswar, Bud Smith, and Douglas Stuart will read from their books and discuss what it’s been to pursue their writing while engaging in professions outside the literary world.

Chaya Bhuvaneswar is the author of White Dancing Elephants, which received the Dzanc Books Prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for a Debut Story Collection, and she has also written about her work as a clinical psychiatrist for The New York Times.

Bud Smith is the author of several books, including the novel Teenager, forthcoming from Vintage in 2022, and the memoir Work, about artmaking and his job working heavy construction in New Jersey.

Mary South is the author of You Will Never Be Forgotten, which was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for a Debut Story Collection and longlisted for The Story Prize. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, NOON, Guernica, and elsewhere. She has received support from VCCA, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and the Sewanee Writers Conference. A graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University, she lives in New York and is at work on a novel about health care, class, and late-capitalist metamorphosis for Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Douglas Stuart is the author of Shuggie Bain, winner of the Booker Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award, which he wrote while also working for many years as a design director in the fashion industry.