Novelist, critic, poet and essayist Phillip Lopate has received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. He is currently a professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches nonfiction writing. In this installment of “Leonard Lopate at Large” on WBAI, Phillip considers not only what makes an essay great, but what makes an essay an essay.