John McPhee talks about writing

In the past few years, John McPhee, who’s now 82, has been talking about his writing, not the articles and books so much as the writing itself.  This is remarkable for someone who has almost never referred to himself in his earlier writing.  Several of these articles on his craft were published in the New Yorker, where he’s been a staff writer since the mid-1960s.  These are available on-line in the magazine’s archives, but I’m pretty sure the full versions are only available to subscribers.  In 2010, he also gave a long interview to Peter Hessler (another New Yorker writer) covering some of the same ground and this is freely available on The Paris Review's site.  I just came across it the other day and I highly recommend it to any non-New Yorker subscriber who’s ever enjoyed McPhee’s writing and/or is curious about how he does it.