Unlike most writers I was never an avid reader growing up. I remember, in high school, disliking most of the assigned reading, especially Treasure Island and Julius Caesar. Yet I chose to major in English in college, where I discovered writers more to my taste (among whom was, of course, Shakespeare). I also started to write in college--poems at first, then a few short stories--which were published in the university's literary magazine. By the time I graduated, I was enough into writing to want to try my wings in an MFA program, so I applied to the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and was accepted in both the fiction and poetry divisions, with a full scholarship and a research assistantship. However, far from extracting any degree of self-confidence from my two years in the Workshop, I was secretly convinced that everyone there was more talented than I was and that I would never make it as a writer. Instead of even trying, I
got married...and thereby hangs a tale.