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. Vigil, a novel, by George Saunders is his latest work: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564991/vigil-by-george-saunders/ 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