"Writers are both born and made, and their teachers share in the making of them, but in what ways?" Molly McQuade asks in An Unsentimental Education, a collection of candid interviews with twenty-one of our leading novelists and poets. Presented as first-person essays, the interviews are with contemporary writers who have studied, taught at, or cultivated other ties with the University of Chicago. The book provides an occasion for the writers to reflect on their Chicago experiences and on ideas about education in general. What education does a writer need? How can formal learning impel the writing life? What school stories or tales told out of school do Philip Roth, Hayden Carruth, Marguerite Young, George Steiner, Charles Simic, Susan Sontag, and Saul Bellow have in store and want to share.

Interviews with:Saul Bellow, Paul Carroll, Hayden Carruth, Robert Coover, Leon Forrest, June Jordan, Janet Kauffman, Morris Philipson, M. L. Rosenthal, Philip Roth, Susan Fromberg Shaeffer, Charles Simic, Susan Sontag, George Starbuck, George Steiner, Richard Stern, Nathaniel Tarn, Douglas Unger, Kurt Vonnegut, and Marguerite Young.