Writers on Craft: Elissa Schappell

Elissa Schappell is the author of two books of fiction, most recently,  Blueprints for Building Better Girls (Simon & Schuster) and Use Me (William Morrow), which was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award, a New York Times Notable Book and an Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. She is a founding editor of Tin House, where she is currently Editor-at-Large, a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair where she writes the Hot Type book column, and formerly a Senior Editor of The Paris Review. In this interview she talks about the importance of creating structures for writing, going to the “dark places,” in her writing and the importance of writers working in the direction of their strengths.