Claire Vaye Watkins, author of YELLOW PINE
Claire Vaye Watkins was born in Bishop, California and raised in the Mojave Desert on the Amargosa River. A graduate of the University of Nevada Reno, she earned her MFA from the Ohio State University in 2010. Claire is the author of three novels—Gold Fame Citrus, I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness, and Yellow Pine—and the short story collection Battleborn. She has received the Story Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, as well as fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Alta, One Story, The Believer, The Paris Review, Tin House, McSweeny’s, BOMB, The New Republic,Either/Or, Freeman’s, New York Magazine, The Nevada Independent, The New York Times and elsewhere. She is was included in Granta’s “Best Young American Novelists” and the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.” Claire is on the board of the Amargosa Conservancy and a professor in the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. She lives in Orange County and the Mojave Desert.
Claire joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about voice, perfectionism, weaving in backstory, plotting, writing climate fiction, maintaining stamina, and much more.
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(Recorded on June 12, 2026)
Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)