Matt Bell is the author most recently of the novels Appleseed, Scrapper (a Michigan Notable Book) and In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods (a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award and an Indies Choice Adult Debut Book of the Year Honor Recipient, as well as the winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award). His stories have appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Tin House, Conjunctions, Fairy Tale Review, Gulf Coast, and many other publications. A native of Michigan, he now teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.

Michelle Wildgen is the author of the novels Bread and Butter, But Not For Long, and You’re Not You (both available in paperback from Picador), and is the editor of an anthology, Food & Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast (Tin House Books). You’re Not You has been adapted for film, starring Hilary Swank and Emmy Rossum.

Michelle received her MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and has taught fiction and nonfiction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and the Tin House Writers’ Workshop. She is an executive editor at Tin House Magazine and former books editor with Tin House Books.Michelle’s nonfiction has included a weekly column on food television as well as individual essays on a wide range of topics: from American Girl doll Rebecca Rubin, Burt Reynolds’ 1970s fan mail, and obscure Wisconsin card games to the craft of writing, fresh mozzarella, deer-hunting for the neophyte, and the number of times one must endure anaphylactic shock before giving up shellfish for good.

Her fiction, personal essays, and food writing have appeared in publications including The New York Times, O, the Oprah Magazine, RealSimple.com, and anthologies such as Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer, Dirty Words, Best New American Voices 2004, Best Food Writing 2004 and 2009, Death by Pad Thai and Other Unforgettable Meals, and journals including StoryQuarterly, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Awards and honors include a scholarship to Bread Loaf, residency at the Hall Farm Center in Vermont, and the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing from Prairie Schooner.

Refuse to Be Done is encouraging and intensely practical, focusing always on specific rewriting tasks, techniques, and activities for every stage of the process. You won’t find bromides here about the “the writing Muse.” Instead, Bell breaks down the writing process in three sections. In the first, Bell shares a bounty of tactics, all meant to push you through the initial conception and get words on the page. The second focuses on reworking the narrative through outlining, modeling, and rewriting. The third and final section offers a layered approach to polishing through a checklist of operations, breaking the daunting project of final revisions into many small, achievable tasks.

Virtual Author Visit: Matt Bell with Michelle Wildgen