Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm San Frigoso. Welcome to the show.

Welcome to the show. Hey everyone. Thanks for being here. Today on the show I am pleased to be sitting with

writer George Saunders. You may know his work from books like 10th of December, Lincoln and the Barto, Civil Warland and Bad Decline.

He has been a contributor to the New Yorker since 1992, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Man Booker Prize for Best

Work in Fiction, he is, in my view, one of our greatest living short story writers. I put him in the same conversation

of folks like Grace Paley or Alice Monroe. But his new book is something a little different.

It's called A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, in which four Russian writers give a masterclass

on writing, reading, and life. It's a collection born out of this course Saunders has been teaching

at Syracuse University for 20 years now. It's a kind of coveted class that anyone who's ever wanted to write would love to take.

And now, in some ways, you can.

A sort of virtual workshop. Reading this book is like being transported back to the classroom, but in a good way. Like, you know, the one class and teacher you actually liked and look forward to that you were

excited to learn from as you're about to hear there's a lot to learn from George Saunders.

You know, he's fond of talking about art as a moral ethical tool for investigation.

But what I think often happens in reading his work is that you feel something for someone you do not know.

Fictitious people that

funny, you enter his work,

funny and flawed, human,

you enter his work in one state of mind

and walk out on the other side, slightly changed.

You feel more awake to the world around you, a little bit lighter. his touch, subtle but

perceptible. My hope, and I know it's a big one, is that you have a similar

experience by the end of this conversation.

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