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

I thought that I wasn't an essayist because I just didn't see myself in a lot of the essays that were popular at the time. That's why I joined the poetry program in grad school.

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.

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

Sometimes the essay is where we end up when everything that we know must change.

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.

Inclusiveness isn't what I want to push back against. The obsession with facts is.