In this 2014 Louisiana Channel interview from his home in Brooklyn, Paul Auster talks about how a chance meeting with legendary baseball player Willie Mays led him to become a writer and what he has learned about writing. “The essence of being an artist is to confront the things you’re trying to do, to tackle it head on, and if it’s good, it will have its own beauty.” Auster died at the age of seventy-seven on April 30, 2024.
Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.