This volume evolved from a series of discussions with Wallace Stegner during his two-month residency at Dartmouth College in the summer of 1980. Stegner was among the first students in the U.S. to receive a master's degree in creative writing. He also founded and directed for 25 years Stanford University's creative writing program. Here he criticizes instructors who use their classrooms to create a coterie of copiers, as well as those indulgent professors who rhapsodize about their students' work without warrant.