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).

Last year, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, written by Kim Edwards '81, became a literary phenomenon and surprise summer reading hit.

Within weeks of its paperback release, the novel simultaneously reached number one on The New York Times, USA Today, Publisher's Weekly, and Book Sense bestseller lists, and it has been published in 34 languages.

In the second episode (mp3) of the podcast series Colgate Conversations: Writers and heir craft, Edwards discusses the novel, which tells the story of a child born with Down syndrome and the family secrets and lies that follow.

Colgate professor Peter Balakian, whose book The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response was a New York Times bestseller, is the first guest for a new podcast series produced on campus.