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.

What I didn't realize when I was in school and what I suspect a lot of young writers today don't get either is that you have to create the world that you want to exist in as an artist.

Yet there are some critics in the nonfiction world who still look at some of today's stranger interpretations of the essay and say "You don't belong here. That's not how we do things." I think that's problematic.

An essay is something that tracks the evolution of a human mind.

I look for the kind of text that doesn't look like the writer I'm considering. Plutarch is a great example.

If Plutarch is the essayist I want to believe he is, he would want us all to sit in his chair.

Sometimes what I'm looking for is the thing that will help renew people's interest in a writer that they may have written off as not their kind of writer.