Steven Pressfield is a bestselling novelist, nonfiction author, and screenwriter. He published his first novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, in his early fifties, launching him onto the literary map and leading to a 2000 film directed by Robert Redford. His 1998 Spartan epic Gates of Fire became a modern classic of military historical fiction, widely read in military circles around the world and selling more than one million copies. His newest novel, The Arcadian, published in 2026, returns to the terrain of war and the warrior’s inner life in a genre-bending story set in sixteenth-century Spain. Following the mercenary Telamon across time and lifetimes, the novel explores fate, violence, redemption, and whether a man made for battle can ever truly lay down his sword. Pressfield is also the author of the 2002 bestseller The War of Art and subsequent books including Turning Pro and Do the Work, which have made him a defining voice on resistance, discipline, and the inner challenges of writing, work, and the creative life. The War of Art Gates of Fire Tides of War The Arcadian A Man at Arms The Legend of Bagger Vance 0:00:00 — Steven Pressfield 0:00:24 — Resistance with a Capital R 0:01:51 — First Drafts & the Editing Process 0:05:44 — Editors, Collaboration & Sean Coyne 0:08:26 — Screenwriting & Stealing Ideas 0:13:31 — Telamon of Arcadia & the New Book 0:17:55 — Relationship to Characters & the Writing Life 0:26:35 — Commitment, Self-Doubt & Working Without Attachment 0:36:28 — Advertising, Early Life & Finding Your Thing 0:44:44 — Bagger Vance, the Bhagavad Gita & the Muse 0:49:27 — Source, the Studio & the Ancient World