Min Jin Lee

“So, even if my grades weren’t that great, I ended up getting these prizes, which meant that whoever the readers were, in the English department, thought that I had something, and I remember thinking, Oh, I’m not a writer, but maybe I know how to say something.”

Well, I’ll give you a counterexample. I took a two-hundred-dollar class at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and my class was taught by a person named Jhumpa Lahiri, before she won the Pulitzer Prize, and in that class was Cathy Park Hong, Lisa Ko, and Ed Lin. So, is it possible to meet other people who are very, very serious about what you do? Yes, and it’s an extraordinary opportunity to meet other writers who care as much as you care. (New Yorker, February 2022)

All writers are trying best to write about something that matters to them. All writings have two purposes. It must be edifying and entertaining.