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Upcoming Events

Live from Prairie Lights | Margaret Yapp & Katie Berta- poetry

Friday, April 26, 2024 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
Iowa Writers’ Workshop alum, Margaret Yapp will read from Green for Luck: Poems To subscribe to a weekly emailing list of Writers' Workshop events, please fill in the linked form or email iww@uiowa.edu with “Events Mailing List Subscribe” in the subject line.
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Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop

Sunday, April 28, 2024 2:30pm to 4:30pm
Stanley Museum of Art
Join us monthly to generate new creative writing inspired by works in the Stanley collection. Each session will be led by a different talented writer from our area, who will be offering a new prompt and a new approach to ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by visual art). Bring your own notebook and pencil or computer and leave with the beginning of a newly written piece. Co-sponsored by Iowa City Poetry. Teen and adult writers in all genres are welcome. Write at the Stanley meets every fourth...

Live from Prairie Lights | Jorrell Watkins & Romeo Oriogun

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
Writers' Workshop alumni Jorrell Watkins and Romeo Oriogun will read from their poetry. Jorrell Watkins will read from Play/House, published by Northwestern University Press. “The ideas of 'play' and 'house' are interwoven gradually in Jorrell Watkins’ debut collection, with the changing light stretching and bending the shadows of masculinity, familial intimacy, and societal violences. Through his intense play with the vernacular and syntax of blk English, Watkins defamiliarizes urban Southern...
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Recent News

Congratulations to Workshop director Lan Samantha Chang & alumni, Michelle Huneven and Elizabeth McCracken, 2024 Literature Award winners!

Director of the English and Creative Writing Major Kaveh Akbar in the NYTimes

Not sure what book to dive into next? Here is a shortlist of titles released in 2023 by University of Iowa grads, including the latest winner of the National Book Award for Fiction

University of Iowa English Professor Ed Folsom receives an honorary doctorate from TU Dortmund

Translation Workshop celebrates 60 years and looks at what’s next

5Q Interview: Stephen J. Dinsmore, UI Press Author of 'Iowa's Changing Wildlife'

Featured Archive: Daniyal Mueenuddin reading, Live from Prairie Lights, January 21, 2010

Writers' Workshop graduate Justin Torres wins the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction

Congrats to Iowa Writers' Workshop alums Justin Torres, winner of the National Book Award for fiction, and Paul Harding, fiction finalist

5Q Interview: Samsun Knight, UI Press Author of 'The Diver'

Featured Archive: 'Time and Distance Overcome' by Eula Biss, from The Iowa Review, 2008

The Daily Iowan named national Newspaper, Online and Multiplatform Pacemaker winners by the Associated Collegiate Press

5Q Interview: Thomas A. Dodson, UI Press Author of 'No Use Pretending'

5Q Interview: Tzveta Sofronieva, IWP Resident

5Q Interview: Li Kotomi 李琴峰, IWP Resident

5Q Interview: Iya Kiva Ія Ківа, 2023 IWP Resident

5Q Interview: Shiloh Carroll, UI Press Author

5Q Interview: Christine Evans, UI Press Author

5Q Interview: WANG Zhanhei 王占黑, IWP Resident

5Q Interview: Aigerim Tazhi Айгерим Тажи, IWP Resident

Volume 53, Issue 1 of The Iowa Review is out now! In this issue: a new stepmom, Superman comics, a ship on fire and ballerinas in New York City

Workshop alum Yiyun Li, Jayne Anne Phillips and C Pam Zhang on the 'L.A. Times' list of "10 books to add to your reading list in September"

5Q Interview: Noelle Q. De Jesus, IWP Resident

The 5th issue of the Prison Writing Project from the Magid Center for Writing is now published & available to read online!

"Unheard Melodies," Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Shane McCrae interviewed in 'The New York Review'

Congratulations to Iowa Writers' Workshop grad Logan Hoffman-Smith! 2023 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction & 2023 Justin Chin Memorial Scholarship

Featured Archive: Jamel Brinkley reading, Live from Prairie Lights, September 14, 2018

Featured Archive: Denis Johnson reading, The University of Iowa, 1991

5Q Interview: Iowa Summer Writing Festival Instructor Tricia Park

A new issue of the Exchanges Journal from the Iowa Translation Workshop is live! Check out "Landmarks" today, with brand new translation work.

The Iowa Summer Writing Festival returns to Iowa City this July and is offering in-person workshops for the first time since 2019!

"When I went to Iowa, how lucky was it that the first reader of my first novel was Kurt Vonnegut. I couldn't have asked for a better mentor than that." -- John Irving

Iowa Playwrights Workshop alum Samuel D. Hunter takes home three awards for his screenplay of "The Whale"

Congratulations to Adedayo Agarau, who has been awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University

Congratulations to Workshop alum Jamil Jan Kochai, on The Story Prize longlist for 'The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories'!

Congratulations to Lan Samantha Chang, Lucy Ives, and Zachary Lazar, on the longlist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize!

Iowa Playwrights Workshop graduate Samuel D. Hunter talks about his time at Iowa and writing his play, The Whale, now adapted into a film starring Brendan Fraser

In ‘This Other Eden,’ a Historical Tale of Paradise Lost: a fantastic New York Times review of Workshop alum & Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Harding's new novel

Congratulations to Joy Harjo, winner of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award and to Vauhini Vara, a finalist for the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, from The National Book Critics Circle

"Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2023" includes new books by UI grads Sabrina Orah Mark, Curtis Sittenfeld, Edan Lepucki, C Pam Zhang, Vauhini Vara & Jamel Brinkley!

Highlighted piece from International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill on preserving truth-telling

Congratulations to Iowa Writers' Workshop grad Brandon Taylor for this National Book Foundation prize for his wonderful debut, "Real Life"!

International Writing Program 2022 Spring Residency alum Shehan Karunatilaka longlisted for the Booker Prize!

Sallie Fullerton, an Iowa Workshop alum, won a 2022-23 Fulbright Study/Research grant in Creative Writing to Canada!

UI Visiting Professor Hanif Abdurraquib's A LITTLE DEVIL IN AMERICA won a 2022 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Congratulations to Jane Wong, Ann Patchett, Joy Williams, Michelle Gil-Montero, Kelsi Vanada, and Lisa Wells, on the longlists for PEN America's 2022 Literary Awards

Congratulations to UI professors Melissa Febos and Donika Kelly, finalists for National Book Critics Circle Awards!

NWP faculty Melissa Febos' BODY WORK gets a starred review in Publishers Weekly! Says, “This is a wonder.”

Congratulations to Elizabeth McCracken, longlisted for the National Book Award!

Daniel Alarcón, Iowa Writers' Workshop alum, named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow!

Congratulations to Maggie Shipstead! Her novel Great Circle is on the shortlist for the 2021 Booker Prize!

An article about translating Amanda Gorman’s work in the Washington Post with University of Iowa Translation MFA Director Aron Aji

Mindy Kaling to Adapt Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Sanjena Sathian's Book "Gold Diggers" for TV.

Director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Lan Samantha Chang has been named a 2021-22 Berlin Prize Fellow, awarded to scholars, writers, and artists who represent the highest standards of excellence in their field

Director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Lan Samantha Chang has been named a 2021-22 Berlin Prize Fellow, awarded to scholars, writers, and artists who represent the highest standards of excellence in their field!

Announcing a new issue of Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation from the UI Translation MFA program! Check out their spring 2021 issue, "Without"

Nonfiction Writing Program alum Sarah Viren has been named a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for her harrowing account in the NYT of being sabotaged by a rival on the academic job market.

The Program Era Project from UI English is the first computational investigation of the Iowa Writers' Workshop next door

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has honored five University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduates and a former visiting faculty member with its 2021 awards!

Congratulations to the 2021 Guggenheim Fellows, including those with Iowa connections: Sandra Lim, Stephen Kuusisto, Tracie Morris, Alexander Chee, and Tayari Jones!

Congratulations to Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Shira Dentz, winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize, for her new book, 'Sisyphusina'

International Writing Program alums Kwame Dawes and Pierre Joris among the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards Program career achievement award winners

An article about translating Amanda Gorman’s work in the Washington Post with Translation MFA Director Aron Aji

Congratulations to Jerald Walker (UI English BA 1993), whose book How to Make a Slave and Other Essays was named a 2020 National Book Awards finalist!

Nonfiction Writing Program alum Rachel Yoder's first book hasn't even released yet, but she's already finished the screenplay for a film adaptation slated to star Oscar-nominated actress Amy Adams

International Writing Program alums Kwame Dawes and Pierre Joris among the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards Program career achievement award winners

A fantastic interview with Nonfiction Writing Program alum Blair Braverman on the New York Times Sway podcast!

Oprah Announces New Book Club Picks: The Gilead Novels by Marilynne Robinson

A new PBS documentary on Flannery O'Connor, an alum of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, has been released

Congrats to Romeo Oriogun, Eduardo C. Corral, C Pam Zhang, Brandon Taylor, and Garth Greenwell, finalists for the Lambda Literary Awards!

The City Council of Iowa City voted in March to rename Creekside Park as James Alan McPherson Park!

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Featured Writer

Rita Dove

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rita Dove received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1977.

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Program Highlight

BA in Screenwriting

Students are instructed on practical skills and knowledge needed to become successful members of the screenwriting industry!

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Featured Archive

Jo Ann Beard + Melissa Febos reading

Live from Prairie Lights, 03/26/2021

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"I do not in fact know what I would have done, or who I would have been as an adult if I hadn’t lived in and around Iowa City"

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​ - Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1992)

 

 

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