I'm beyond thrilled to get to talk about friendship and Hard to Love with Sarah Gollust, one of of the heroines of Hard to Love, and Sugi Ganeshananthan, her long-time friend and colleague. If you're in Minnesota, come join us! If you have friends there, tell them to come!

V.V. Ganeshananthan is the author of the novel Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize and named one of Washington Post Book World's Best of 2008. She is at work on a second novel, excerpts of which have appeared in Granta, Ploughshares, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her reviews, essays, journalism, and short fiction have appeared in The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, and The Washington Post, among others. She has been visiting faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of Michigan, and presently teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota.

Sarah Gollust is an Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Her research examines media influence on health policy and public opinion about public health issues. She teaches public health ethics and health policy analysis to graduate students. Her academic work has been published in a range of peer-reviewed public health and health policy journals, and her commentaries have appeared in the Star Tribune, the Washington Post, the Health Affairs blog and the New York Times.