This was a gift from Carmel when I left my last-but-one job and I hung on to it out of appreciation for the gesture. I came across it during my most recent bookshelf clean-out and it turns out to be an apt thing for me to've read right now, as its account of Grimes's coming into his life as a writer and the relationship he develops with the already-established Frank Conroy, director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop is full of obviously hard-won insight into the effort and craft required to write well.
