Before Leslie Jamison was a New York Times bestseller, she was a student at Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In an interview with The Millions, Jamison said she has “a lot of faith and trust in the workshop process,” but this doesn’t mean she believes that the workshop process doesn’t come with its own set of limitations. Jamison cautions writers against letting the other voices “crowd too close or get too loud.”
At my first workshop at Iowa, the wonderful Elizabeth McCracken told us that it would be a useful workshop if we incorporated 20% of what we heard — that didn’t mean we were being arrogant, to “disregard” the other 80%, just that part of our job was to sift through the feedback, rather than feeling like it was our task or obligation to incorporate all of it.
