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.

People like to say that Plutarch's is a really "personal" voice, but in truth Plutarch tells us very little about his life. His voice is personable but never personal. It feels intimate because he's addressing the world as we experience it, at this level, a human level, rather than way up here where very few of us live.

If there's a poster boy for the fact that all essays are written through personae, it's Crèvecoeur.

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

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.

A risk is something that feels risky to the person who's taking it.