George Saunders: Tenth of December, Part One

George Saunders, author most recently of the highly praised collection

Tenth of December (Random House), is a writer whose compact short stories find the bottom of the American heap and then see how much lower we can go – and still survive. Saunders reflects on writing, "infinitely" revising, and how he finds the voices for his luminous but smudged characters. (

Part Two)

Read an excerpt from Tenth of December.