Clinton Crockett Peters is the author of the book Pandora’s Garden: Kudzu, Cockroaches, and Other Misfits of Ecology, which Elena Passarello described as “a compelling bestiary of overlooked and misunderstood individuals.” His essays and fiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Orion, Southern Review, Texas Monthly, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and Fourth Genre. Currently the Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Berry College, Clinton followed up his MFA in Nonfiction with a PhD from the University of North Texas.

“To attempt. essai. This is what I did at Iowa, and I didn’t often succeed. I literally threw everything away from my first workshop, and I didn’t publish anything until a little ditty in my final year. My book, Pandora’s Garden, grew out of my thesis, but it took me seven years from its inception to finish. I thought about quitting. I thought I would never learn to essay. I wrote absolute crap. But I also gardened. I planted eggplants, broccoli, jalapeños, sweet potatoes, dozens of spices, and too many tomatoes. And with all that crap I fertilized a book.

Nothing could be more important than the fodder I got from the NWP, particularly the History of the Essay course. I took the class twice. If you are an aspiring essayist and can take it with John D’Agata, move heaven and earth and more to do so. Seeing myself in the lineage of nonfiction, and subsequently, literature, helped me figure out the perennials: what do I have to say? Why write? Where do I fit in within this wide and jumbled world? I kept at these questions with a PhD in English, but the seed, a vibrant, nourished seed, was planted in the NWP.”