I wanted to create an environment in which more than just personal essays could be represented, and in which stranger approaches to making essays could be celebrated.

I like Plutarch because I've read him forever, and I know that he's incredibly funky, even though his mainstream image is as Mr. Unfunky.

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.

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.

It's fun to just skim through piles of books in the stacks of a library.

In some ways we want definitions that can help protect our own interpretations of the genre.

As a student at the time, I kind of felt like my only options as a nonfiction writer were to either jump on the personal essay bus or linger back at the station, hoping that some other heretofore unknown mode of transportation was going to magically show up to take me where I wanted to go.