The New York Times' George Saunders Interview

 

The New York Times today published a fascinating interview with author George Saunders. 

Saunders, born December 2, 1958, is an American author known for short stories, essays, novellas, novels, and books for children. His work has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and GQ. From 2006 to 2008, he also wrote a weekly column titled “American Psyche” for the weekend magazine of The Guardian.

Saunders is a professor at Syracuse University and has received multiple National Magazine Awards for fiction, winning in 1994, 1996, 2000, and 2004. He earned second prize in the O. Henry Awards in 1997. His debut collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, was a finalist for the 1996 PEN/Hemingway Award. In 2006, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and received the World Fantasy Award for his short story “CommComm.”

His later collection, In Persuasion Nation, was a finalist for The Story Prize in 2007. Saunders won the PEN/Malamud Award in 2013 and was also a finalist for the National Book Award that year. Tenth of December: Stories received both The Story Prize and the inaugural Folio Prize in 2014. His novel Lincoln in the Bardo won the Booker Prize in 2017.

The interview in The New York Times magazine examines the contrast between Saunders’s public reputation as a figure associated with kindness and the more complex inner life that informs his work. Following the viral success of his 2013 commencement address on kindness, later adapted into a best-selling book, Saunders became viewed by many as a moral guide, a role he approaches with both appreciation and discomfort given the dark humor and satire present in much of his fiction.

In the interview, Saunders resists idealization, speaking candidly about personal shortcomings and internal contradictions. He reflects on meditation, the practical limits of kindness, and the self-deceptions that can prevent people from engaging honestly with the world. These reflections suggest that his writing remains grounded in an ongoing effort to reconcile moral aspiration with the realities of human behavior.

In my view it was a very captivating interview. I don't know of Saunders or his work, I confess, so it has inspired me to go and take a read. I am sharing it here because I think you might also find it very interesting and engaging. Saunders is a very successful author, but has also become a bit of a sage as well, and I wonder how many authors would like to have their advice (in their creative work) not just noticed by, but taken seriously by their readers? 

So, you'll need a subscription, in general, to read from the NYT. Supposedly, as a subscriber myself, this link will allow you to read it for free. I'm not sure how many readers my link will allow, but here we go (copy and paste if click doesn't work):

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/magazine/george-saunders-interview.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DlA.rEwN.Iofj9RUcP6o6&smid=url-share

Until next month... hope your 2026 is off to a great start!

:)

Dianne

Dianne Pearce is the chief editor and bottle washer at Current Words Publishing, and the half-cocked imaginer behind Old Scratch Press and Instant Noodles. Pearce loves helping writers realize the dream of having their work published. I mean she is really crazy about doing that for some reason. To that end, to join in the fray, to look at the thing from the other side, to stand in another’s shoes, and all of those things, she is fully expecting and promising to publish her first collection of poetry, In the Cancer Cafeteria, spring of 2026. Please don’t hold your breath. For very long.