Can the end of the world as we know it bring about new ways of living? In this broadcast of Severance Radio, host Heidi Kyser interviews expert speculative fiction writers and creative writing professors Christopher Coake and Claire Vaye Watkins on the imaginative work of starting over after disaster.

Christopher Coake is the author of You Came Back (Grand Central Publishing, 2012), as well as the collection of short stories We're In Trouble (Harcourt 2005), which won the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship. In addition, Coake was listed among "Granta's Best of Young American Novelists" in 2007. His stories have been published in several literary journals and anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2004 and the Best American Noir of the Century. A native Hoosier, he received his MFA in fiction from Ohio State University.

Claire Vaye Watkins is the author of Battleborn, winner of the Story Prize, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. Battleborn was named a Best Book of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Time Out New York, and Flavorwire, and a Best Short Story Collection by NPR.org. In 2012, the National Book Foundation named Claire one of the 5 Best Writers Under 35. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Best of the West 2011, Best of the Southwest 2013, and elsewhere. A graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno and the Ohio State University, Claire has received fellowships from the Writers’ Conferences at Sewanee and Bread Loaf. An assistant professor at Bucknell University, Claire is also the co-director, with Derek Palacio, of the Mojave School, a free creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.