We Wanted to be Writers is a rollicking and insightful blend of interviews, commentary, advice, gossip, anecdotes, analyses, history, and asides with more than twenty graduates and teachers at the now legendary Iowa Writers' Workshop between 1974 and 1978. Among the talents that emerged in those years—writing, passionately jousting, criticizing, drinking, and debating in the classrooms and barrooms of Iowa City—were the young versions of writers who became John Irving, Jane Smiley, T.C. Boyle, Allan Gurganus, Sandra Cisneros, Rita Dove, William Kinsella, Jayne Ann Phillips, Jorie Graham, Jim Galvin, Lee Blessing, Mark Jarman, and Joy Harjo. Included are sidebars about what the famous writers are reading. We Wanted to be Writers is chock full of insights and a treasure trove of inspiration for all writers, readers, history lovers, and anyone who ever "wanted to be a writer." John Irving on Kurt Vonnegut: "I met Kurt Vonnegut in Iowa City; I'd read all his books, which were not easy to find then, and I believed he was underrated—and unfairly categorized as a science–fiction writer. . . . He told me that he thought capitalism would be kind to me one day. I had no idea what he meant."