It may be us they wish to meet, but it’s themselves they want to talk about.
—Cyril Connolly
Is it hard to get into Iowa?
How hard, would you say?
One in ten?
One in a hundred?
Yikes. Are you sure?
Did you get in on your first try?
Where else did you apply?
Them again?
Didn’t care to make your way in the big city?
What did you submit?
Was your fiction any good?
So you were in the workshop, then, and not the nonfiction program?
That wasn’t even there then?
Do you think of me being a good fit for Iowa?
Do you think I could get in, based on that story of mine you workshopped and seemed to like?
Do you prefer a PDF or a Word doc?
Would you be willing to write a recommendation for me?
May I mark it as non-confidential?
Did you go to Iowa with anyone who became famous?
No one other than her?
I guess I meant famous famous?
How about among the faculty?
Was Vonnegut there?
Cheever?
John Irving?
J. P. Donleavy?
What is or was the Iowa method of teaching?
Does it work?
Is that a coherent pedagogy?
Do you still subscribe to it, would you say?
Who was the worst teacher you had during those two years in grad school?
How do you spell that?
Who was the best teacher you had?
Has she written any books?
Published?
Did you get a Teaching-Writing fellowship?
How about a postgrad Michener fellowship?
You lived in Iowa City for five years? Holy Moses.
Why?
I see—what has she written?
Anything else?
Was that hard for her?
For both of you?
Does it help that it’s in the middle of cornfields?
It sort of forces people to concentrate on their work because there’s nothing else to do?
You don’t get cabin fever?
I’ve heard this line: “If you can survive Iowa, you can survive anything”—can you translate that for me?
Is there a certain type of person drawn toward this sort of self-renunciatory isolation?
What was the gestalt of your particular cohort?
What’s the most helpful piece of advice you got at Iowa?
Least helpful?
What’s your first reaction when you see someone wearing an Iowa Hawkeyes sweatshirt anywhere in the world?
How about a baseball cap?
Your first novel apparently came out of going to University of Iowa basketball games. Why didn’t you write it as memoir, à la A Fan’s Notes?
When you were in the workshop, you were also a patient in the university’s speech clinic, “crossing a footbridge between two four-story brick buildings of language.” Did the workshop faculty know you had a speech therapist, and vice versa?
Was Edward Hoagland teaching at Iowa then?
Did you and he ever talk about stuttering?
Would you have written your novel about stuttering if you hadn’t been a patient there for five years?
Same question, I guess: if you wrote it now, would you write it as memoir, à la Girl, Interrupted?
What do you think—big picture—of those first two books of yours?
Twenty books later, do you worry about your graphomania?
Where’s the fire, as they say?
Do you ever think of using a pseudonym?
“D. Jonathan Schildkraut”?
Seriously?
Is the graphomania related in some sense to stuttering?
How could it not be, I guess?
Do you now wish you had gotten a PhD so you could be discussing Roland Barthes on Racine rather than Brendan’s confession re last night’s debauch?
Are you a good teacher?
Are you “nice”?
I’ve seen some teaching evaluations for you online, and—to be honest—they aren’t all that great. Any response?
I see—the proverbial pound of flesh?
I heard that Tin House said you couldn’t come back because you were too mean toward your students. Is that true?
You also teach in a “low-residency” writing program. Is that legit or more of a soft scam?
Do you ever worry that you’ve contributed to a Program Era writing aesthetic?
Do you wish you taught in a writing program with a “nonfiction track”?
Why don’t you?
That’s on you, isn’t it?
Who’s the best undergrad you’ve ever taught?
Grad student?
Have you stayed in touch with Aaron Strumwasser?
Does writing still come fairly easily to you?
How about speaking?
I’ve seen some YouTube videos where your stutter got pretty bad—were you just nervous those nights?
Didn’t take your meds?
I see—started upping the dose?
You were in grad school at the apex of “dirty realism”—Carver, Beattie, Frederick Barthelme, Mary Robison, et al. During that period, were you sympathetic or antipathetic to that literary movement?
How did it influence you, your work?
Are all your books available in paperback?
As ebooks, too?
How about in audio?
Could you quit teaching now if you wanted to?
Do you still like teaching?
Big fan of Zoom?
Any plans to retire soon?
Would you be terrified of the echoing isolation?
What advice do you have for when someone should start taking workshops?
For when they should stop?
I guess what I’m trying to ask is, exactly what are the tangible benefits?
Iowa is the oldest writing program in the United States; is it still also among the best?
You rarely mention that you went there; why not?
You’re now in your mid-sixties. Have you accomplished what you wanted to accomplish?
Any inconsolable regrets?
If you had to write your obituary in exactly one hundred words, what would it say?