George Saunders is an author known for his inventive short stories and the Booker Prize–winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo. His works include the collections Tenth of December and Liberation Day and the craft book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, he has received numerous honors, from a MacArthur Fellowship to the National Book Foundation’s 2025 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Saunders teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University, where he has mentored generations of emerging authors.
George Saunders is an author known for his inventive short stories and the Booker Prize–winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo. His works include the collections Tenth of December and Liberation Day and the craft book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. This week, he released Vigil, a new novel that follows his trademark blend of imagination, compassion, and dark humor as it explores life, death, and moral reckoning in the twilight hours of a dying oil executive’s life. Named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, he has received numerous honors, from a MacArthur Fellowship to the National Book Foundation’s 2025 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Saunders teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University, where he has mentored generations of emerging authors.
00:00:00 George Saunders
00:00:20 Letting the story resist you
00:01:47 Micro-choices and creative identity
00:03:17 Luring better selves onto the page
00:03:55 Creativity as reaction, not intention
00:04:39 Permission to write badly
00:05:47 Writing without knowing what you are
00:06:32 Seed crystals and spontaneous stories
00:06:54 Lincoln in the Bardo begins
00:07:53 Trusting the reader’s intelligence
00:09:21 Teaching specificity over judgment
00:10:39 Respect, intimacy, and the reader
00:11:30 The ghost that meets the reader
00:12:15 Buddhism, Catholicism, and meditation
00:14:20 Empathy as a novelist’s superpower
00:15:03 Voice, ventriloquism, inhabiting characters
00:16:24 Letting characters arrive late
00:17:50 Mining embarrassment and class
00:19:18 AG1
00:20:56 Ideas are overrated
00:22:03 Writing without “great ideas”
00:23:25 Stories as dynamic systems
00:24:28 When meaning kills momentum
00:25:54 Revision as moral clarity
00:27:37 Problems that make stories better
00:29:25 Keeping work private for freedom
00:30:28 Trusting one emotional reader
00:31:16 Research, specificity, and Lincoln
00:32:40 Fiction vs nonfiction structure
00:33:37 Entertainment plus meaning
00:35:12 Writing without cruelty
00:36:07 Fiction as honesty by disguise
00:37:22 Why short stories are harder
00:38:19 Letting play replace intellect
00:39:40 Athletic Nicotine
00:41:19 Dreams, intuition, and structure
00:42:22 Sound before sense
00:43:59 Reading faster to hear rhythm
00:45:37 Songwriting envy and resistance
00:46:49 Avoiding autobiography
00:48:31 Reading mind vs writing mind
00:49:52 Choosing which stories to finish
00:51:01 Finding serious readers
00:52:21 School, mentors, and being seen
00:54:19 Failure as necessary correction
00:56:19 Learning effort without talent
00:57:10 LMNT
00:58:37 Writing late and becoming a teacher
01:00:44 Aging, ambition, and gentler standards
01:03:18 The moral pressure of sentences
01:05:44 Editing as ethical action
01:08:03 When fiction changes the writer
01:10:41 Writing toward kindness
01:13:02 Letting sentences surprise you
01:15:36 Influence without imitation
01:18:05 Reading to grant permission
01:21:12 Gogol, Babel, and sound
01:24:06 Permission-giving as lineage
01:27:19 Dreams that solve books
01:30:12 Custer in the Bardo
01:33:44 Greatness as reassurance
01:36:26 Writing as sound, not meaning
01:39:40 tetragrammaton.com
