In Renee Nicholson's excellent interview for r.k.v.r.y. quarterly, Natalie Sypolt talks about book reviewing, dog ownership, and what it means to be a West Virginia writer! This is one you definitely don't want to miss!

About a month ago, I posed the question: "What Makes a Writer?" and you readers have spoken. The post generated a number of interesting comments, and I have since gone through and tried to summarize your thoughts on the subject. According to all of you, a writer is someone who . . .

When I was in grad school in Ohio, I knew a fellow student/teacher who was, to use his words, "very protective of the title: writer." So much so, that he would not allow his students to refer to themselves casually as writers. (I believe the term they used was "rhetors" or some such nonsense. And so, when students discussed each others' work in class, you'd end up with conversations that started something like this: "What I think this rhetor is trying to do here is . . . .")

I always found this to be kind of silly.