Even if it's a definition that feels oppressive to us, that oppression can be inspiring because it helps us push up against… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
Back in the day, a lot of our instructors in nonfiction were actually fiction scholars. So they would bring in stories as… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
When I'm teaching, I'm not really doing my job if the student who's always comfortable doing wacko stuff all over the page… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
If Plutarch is the essayist I want to believe he is, he would want us all to sit in his chair. — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
I felt a little lost as a student. At Iowa, I felt as if I had gotten into this program that was… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
I would ask the people who were generous toward my own work. After class one day a poetry professor said to me,… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
If there's a poster boy for the fact that all essays are written through personae, it's Crèvecoeur. — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
Inclusiveness isn't what I want to push back against. The obsession with facts is. — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
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… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
I think that in a lot of readers' minds the essay is a lot more utilitarian than it is art. — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
As frustrating as my time in grad school felt, it also helped tremendously because it challenged me to figure out what it was I… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
I'm not worried about what part of their life they needed to massage in order to achieve something that I get to experience as… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
You create your own audience, and your own community of peers, and in some ways you create your own forebears as well. — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
Even if it's a definition that feels oppressive to us, that oppression can be inspiring because it helps us push up against something while… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
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… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
You move your life across the country and make a commitment to a place, and to a genre, and then you realize that neither… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
Pedagogically, we need definitions and borders. They help us get our heads around what we're talking about. — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
“Maybe every essay automatically is in some way experimental — less an outline traveling toward a foregone conclusion than an unmapped quest that has… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
