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Quote by John D'Agata

“I get emails from students at programs all over the country who want to transfer to Iowa, and in most cases their frustrations have absolutely nothing to do with the programs they're attending. They have to do with the growing pains that they're undergoing as writers and with the growing pains that our own genre is constantly undergoing.”

Quote by John D'Agata

Author

John D'Agata is an American essayist known for his distinctive writing style and profound insights into the reality of the world. His works often explore the edges and limits of human existence, as well as the boundaries between language and truth. more

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“You create your own audience, and your own community of peers, and in some ways you create your own forebears as well.”

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“While I was in school, trying to figure out how to write an essay that could both satisfy my nonfiction workshops and still pass as something hybrid-y enough for my poetry workshops, I was looking for models, for forebears.”

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“In college I studied essays with a poet, and so I think my interpretation of the genre was always going to be a little off-kilter.”

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“As frustrating as my time in grad school felt, it also helped tremendously because it challenged me to figure out what it was I thought I wanted.”

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“Back in the day, a lot of our instructors in nonfiction were actually fiction scholars. So they would bring in stories as models for the essay. And in some ways that's a good idea, because we can all learn from other genres. But I think it also made me realize that I literally didn't have an essay model, and that if I wanted one I would have to find it.”

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“And Lopate's anthology helped a lot too. It came out the same year I started grad school, and I remember the book's publication feeling eventful and celebratory. It got a ton of attention for giving voice to this form that had sort of slipped between the cracks. That was exciting to see.”

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“When you're a young writer and you look at people praising a big hefty anthology that has uncovered a long lost genre, it can be disorienting to look inside it and think, "But what it's uncovered still isn't me. What does this mean? Do I not belong in this genre, or is there more of the genre yet to find?"”

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