On Thursday, students who have been studying a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel got to hear straight from the horse's mouth just what it took to write it -- and ask him detailed questions about what intrigued, confused, or enlightened them in their reading of his book.

Jeffrey Eugenides, author of Middlesex, spent 75 minutes with the students in the Living Writers course in conversation about the art and craft of writing.

Justin Cronin is the author of the widely praised novel-in-stories Mary and O'Neil, which won the 2002 PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize, both for best debut fiction of the year.

In the third episode of the podcast series Colgate Conversations: Writers and their Craft, Cronin talks about the success of his book and shares information about his most recent literary activities.

That new work includes the contribution of "Down the Deep Well of Gravity: A Talk on the Cosmology of Fiction" for the Colgate University Press's forthcoming publication of Crafting Fiction, Poetry and Memoir: Talks of the Colgate Writers' Conference (spring 2008).