‘The God of the Woods’ Author Liz Moore
Fresh Air
NPR
4.4 • 34.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Moore says writing is mostly labor, but "2% of the time, usually at the very beginning of a book and the very end of a book, it feels like flying." She's also the author of ‘Long Bright River,’ which was adapted into a series on Peacock starring Amanda Seyfried. Her latest bestseller, ‘The God of the Woods’ centers on a missing girl at a summer camp in the Adirondacks. Moore spoke with contributor Dave Davies about her writing process and adapting her work for TV.
Also, John Powers reviews the thriller series ‘Hijack’ and ‘The Night Manager,’ both of which are returning for their second seasons.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. Our guest today, writer Liz Moore, is on something of a role. |
| 0:07.3 | Her last two novels were national bestsellers. One, Long Bright River, a thriller about a |
| 0:12.9 | policewoman patrolling a troubled Philadelphia neighborhood where her drug-using sister is a sex worker, |
| 0:18.8 | was made into an eight-part TV series on Peacock. Moore was an executive |
| 0:23.1 | producer, co-creator, and co-writer of the series, and its star, Amanda Seifred, has earned a |
| 0:28.9 | Golden Globe nomination for her performance. Moore's latest bestseller, The God of the Woods, |
| 0:34.6 | is set in a remote children's camp in the Adirondacks, where a young |
| 0:38.4 | camper goes mysteriously missing. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan said when she read it, quote, |
| 0:44.0 | I was so thoroughly submerged in a rich fictional world that for hours I barely came up for air. |
| 0:51.1 | Netflix has announced it will produce a limited TV series based on The God of the Woods. |
| 0:56.4 | Moore's novels show quite a range of subjects. |
| 0:59.3 | The central character in an earlier novel, titled Heft, is a 450-pound shut-in in Brooklyn |
| 1:05.0 | who longs for human connection. |
| 1:07.8 | Liz Moore won the 2014 Rome Prize in Literature, and her two most recent books were on Barack Obama's lists of recommended reading. |
| 1:16.3 | Liz Moore lives with her family in Philadelphia, where Fresh Air is produced, and she directs Temple University's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing. |
| 1:24.9 | Liz Moore, welcome to Fresh Air. |
| 1:26.6 | Thank you, Dave. I'm so happy to be here. |
| 1:29.0 | Let's talk about Long Bright River. This is set in this Philadelphia neighborhood, Kensington, |
| 1:34.6 | which has gotten some national attention. It's become a regional center for drug users, |
| 1:40.9 | just because it was a place where people learned they could score drugs. They could use drugs or deal drugs. |
| 1:46.5 | And in some cases, over the years people have been living on sidewalks and in abandoned houses. |
| 1:52.5 | And so it's been a big issue in a lot of ways. |
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