10 Questions with Iowa Writers' Workshop Graduate Eric Olsen (@2bwriters)
Photo Credit: Dennis Mathis This Author Spotlight features Eric Olsen, author of We Wanted to Be Writers and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Eric Olsen was born and raised in Oakland, California, loves the Oakland A’s, and has seen "Moneyball" 147 times (actually, I added that; he's only seen "Moneyball 146 times). Eric started college as a pre-med student at UC Berkeley, like all ambitious young freshmen at the time. His interest in medicine lasted about half-way through his first quiz in “orgo.” He finished college many years and false starts later with a BA in Comparative Literature (Classical Greek, a long story and we won’t get into that here). He got his MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1977. With Glenn Schaeffer, he co-founded in 2000 and then directed the International Institute of Modern Letters, a literary think tank that helped writers who were victims of censorship and persecu