Marilynne Robinson: recommendation

Transcript context

…Why is it you think Iowa out-competes so many other writing workshops? People can, and have, set up writing workshops along the coasts, in larger cities. Iowa very often still seems to do better. Is that just history and path dependence? Or is there some comparative advantage still in Iowa that makes it work? It’s very hard for me to say because it’s the only program that I’ve taught in of that kind, but it’s a culture. One of the things that I think is a definite benefit is that they learn how to be helpful to one another, the people that are students there. They’re very good critics of each other. That’s one of the important things that they seem to learn. And the status of the place — everybody’s success feels like everyone else’s success because of the reputation of it as a community. As far as the faculty are concerned, we were very autonomous. We simply taught as we felt was appropriate in whatever setting, absolute minimum of meetings or anything like that. I think that that’s part of the spirit of it also, that we are trusted and not regulated. When your students would arrive, what is it you had wished they had known but they hadn’t?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.