Steve Almond Q&A with Matthew Zapruder

Q&A and discussion with Steve Almond, author of William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life. The plot of the John Williams’s 1965 novel Stoner is straightforward enough—“Stoner, the only son of subsistence farmers, attends college, unexpectedly falls in love with literature, and becomes a teacher; he endures a disastrous marriage, a prolonged academic feud, and a doomed love affair, then falls ill and dies,” Almond writes—but in William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life, the author sees the novel as a personal reckoning, a catalyst for sharing his own struggles as a writer, father, and husband grappling with his own mortality.

Steve Almond is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Against Football and Candyfreak. His short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, the Best American Mysteries, and the Pushcart Prize anthologies. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He hosts the New York Times “Dear Sugars” podcast with Cheryl Strayed. Steve lives outside Boston with his wife and three children.