I'm not a poet, but I was in the poetry program. And I'm also not much of a nonfiction writer, at least not in the standard sense of nonfiction, nor especially in the way we were thinking about nonfiction back… — John D'Agata Copy Share Image
In college I studied essays with a poet, and so I think my interpretation of the genre was always going to be a little off-kilter. — 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
