A Conversation With Lauren Groff About Her Writing Process
“Often before I write a scene for the final time … I take a minute, close my eyes, and build the world of the scene around me.”
Editor’s Note: Read Lauren Groff’s latest short story, “Birdie,” and learn more about The Atlantic’s new fiction initiative.
To mark the publication of “Birdie,” Lauren Groff’s third story in The Atlantic, she and Ross Andersen, an editor at The Atlantic, discussed, over email, what it’s like to write about sex after #MeToo, how fiction can be used to reexamine relationships, and how Groff writes such vivid scenes. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Birdie” begins with a group of women who knew one another in childhood reuniting at a hospital to visit the titular character, who has terminal cancer. But part of the ensuing narrative takes place decades
