Summary: <br> We talk with authors <a href="https://www.prestonchild.com">Douglas Preston</a> and <a href="https://www.emmadonoghue.com">Emma Donoghue</a> about a collaborative novel whose characters — and their stories — are each written by a different, major literary voice: Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering. <br> <br> <br> <br> Then, we remember Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday by airing some of our conversation with Jonathan Eig, about his biography, King: A Life. Listen to the whole interview <a href="https://www.writersvoice.net/2023/05/an-intimate-portrait-of-mlk-jr-jonathan-eig-king/">here</a>.<br> <br> <br> <br> Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.<br> <br> <br> <br> Find us on Facebook at Writers Voice with Francesca Rheannon, on Instagram and Threads @WritersVoicePodcast or find us on X/Twitter.<br> <br> <br> <br> Love Writer’s Voice? Please rate us on your podcast app. It really helps to get the word out about our show.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Key Words: writer’s voice, podcast, book recommendations, author interview, book podcast, book show, book excerpt, fiction, Douglas Preston, Emma Donoghue, Covid pandemic.<br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FEA4BMhutovWdMWR3IkAJtyvG3uXSsCPA6Q1TunwWe0/edit">Read The Transcript</a><br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> During the height of the Covid pandemic, many authors found their calendars suddenly empty: no bookstore readings, no writers’ conferences, no research trips.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> That’s when <a href="https://authorsguild.org">Author’s Guild</a> president <a href="https://www.prestonchild.com/authors/preston/Author-Bios-Douglas-Preston;art63,97">Douglas Preston </a>had a brilliant idea: why not reach out to suddenly idle writers and ask them to contribute stories to a novel taking place during that time? He roped in Margaret Atwood as a co-editor, and the book project, Fourteen Days, was off the races.<br> <br> <br> <br> Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days features a collection of diverse characters who are stuck in lockdown because they can’t afford to escape to country houses in the Hamptons or elsewhere.<br> <br> <br> <br> To ease the boredom, they meet every night on their tenement’s rooftop to tell stories to each other. What they create is more than an antidote to boredom, but a true community.<br> <br> <br> <br> Each character is written by a different author, including such luminaries as Dave Eggers, Erica Jong, John Grisham, Meg Wolitzer and Scott Turow, as well as my guests Robert Preston and Emma Donoghue.<br> <br> <br> <br> The proceeds from Fourteen Days are <a href="https://authorsguild.org/advocacy/" data-type="link" data-id="https://authorsguild.org/advocacy/">supporting the Author’s Guild fight against book bans, AI attacks on copyright and more </a><a href="https://authorsguild.org/advocacy/" data-type="link" data-id="https://authorsguild.org/advocacy/">protections</a> for authors.<br>
