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?"

You're often looking at writing from writers who, for the most part, are working in forms that traditionally fit into other genres. But sometimes, in the midst of their better-known stuff, there's this wayward thing, and because it's wayward it isn't considered representative of their work, so it falls through the cracks.

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.

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.

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

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.