We Wanted to Be Writers: Life, Love, and Literature at the Iowa Writers' Workshop

Eric Olsen · Glenn Schaeffer

Aug 2011 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

We Wanted to be Writers is a rollicking and insightful blend of original interviews, commentary, advice, gossip, anecdotes, analyses, history, and asides with nearly thirty graduates and teachers at the now legendary Iowa Writers' Workshop between 1974 and 1978. Among the talents that emerged in those years-writing, criticizing, drinking, and debating in the classrooms and barrooms of Iowa City-were the younger versions of writers who became John Irving, Jane Smiley, T. C. Boyle, Michelle Huneven, Allan Gurganus, Sandra Cisneros, Jayne Anne Phillips, Jennie Fields, Joy Harjo, Joe Haldeman, and many others. It is chock full of insights and a treasure trove of inspiration for all writers, readers, history lovers, and anyone who ever "wanted to be a writer."
Jane Smiley on the Iowa writers' workshop: "In that period, the teachers tended to be men of a certain age, with the idea that competition was somehow the key-the Norman Mailer period. The story was that if you disagreed with Norman, or gave him a bad review, he'd punch you in the nose. You were supposed to get in fights in restaurants."

T.C. Boyle on his short story "Drowning": "I got $25 for it, which was wonderful . . . You know, getting $25 for the product of your own brain? You could buy a lot of beer in Iowa City back then for that."

About the author

Bill Manhire is a novelist, short-story writer, poet, editor, and educator. He was born in Invercargill, New Zealand in 1946. He attended the University of Otago. Manhire is an English professor at Victoria University with research interests in New Zealand literature and the literature of Antarctica. He is also the director of the school's creative writing program and the editor of "Mutes and Earthquakes," a book containing the work of several students. Manhire is New Zealand's Poet Laureate and was the Fullbright Visiting Professor in New Zealand Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1999. Manhire has been publishing since 1970, producing almost 30 books. He has received the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry three times and the Montana Award.