experience

Harriet Doerr discusses old age, living in Mexico, and the need to combine experience, imagination, and observation when writing. She reads the first chapter of a story published in 1986 called "Picnic at Amapolas," and she also reads a short excerpt from a chapter called "Immense Distances, Extraordinary Events" in her novel Stones for Ibarra (1984), which covers a woman's experience sorting through her deceased husband's belongings.

Leslie Ullman discusses process and reads poems from her collection Natural Histories (1979), including "Bravado," "Fur," "Last Night They Heard the Woman Upstairs," and "Midwife"; she also reads poems that would go on to be collected in Dreams by No One's Daughter (1987).