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More than 40 Pulitzer Prize winners. Seven U.S. Poet Laureates. Countless award-winning playwrights, screenwriters, journalists, translators, novelists and poets.

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Upcoming Events

Iowa City Book Festival | Tree Tour: Literary Grove at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop promotional image

Iowa City Book Festival | Tree Tour: Literary Grove at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop

Monday, October 14, 2024 12:00pm
Dey House
Join University of Iowa Arborist Andy Dahl for a tour of the Literary Grove at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, featuring trees with connections to famous authors.

Iowa City Book Festival | Stuart Dybek

Monday, October 14, 2024 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
The Iowa City Book Festival presents Stuart Dybek, who will read from his work. “Masterful . . . Like Proust, Dybek has a deserved reputation as a superb cartographer of memory.” ―Trevor Quirk, The Los Angeles Review of Books Dybek is the author of five books of fiction — Ecstatic Cahoots, Paper Lantern, I Sailed with Magellan, The Coast of Chicago, and Childhood and Other Neighborhoods — as well as two collections of poetry, Brass Knuckles and Streets in Their Own Ink. Dybek is the recipient...
Counterpoint: The Politics of (International) Writing promotional image

Counterpoint: The Politics of (International) Writing

Monday, October 14, 2024 7:30pm
Voxman Music Building
How do politics affect what poets or novelists write, and even how they write it? How does literature inform political discourse? What is cultural diplomacy, why is it so important, and what is the UI’s role in promoting it? For this inaugural event in the Obermann Center’s new Counterpoint public conversation series, Christopher Merrill — poet, nonfiction writer, translator, editor, and director of the UI’s renowned International Writing Program — and Loren Glass, a historian of creative...
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Latest Articles

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5Q Interview: UI Press Author Amy Frykholm

Monday, October 14, 2024
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5Q Interview: Zhang Chu 张楚, IWP Resident

Tuesday, October 8, 2024
bret anthony johnston in the studio

Sad Me of the Past // Episode 8: Bret Anthony Johnson

Monday, October 7, 2024
Kei Okamoto

5Q Interview: Okamoto Kei 岡本啓, IWP Resident

Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Nathalie chang portrait

5Q Interview: Nathalie Chang, IWP Resident

Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Anna Davtyan by Dirk Skiba

5Q Interview: Anna Davtyan Աննա Դավթյան, IWP Resident

Wednesday, September 18, 2024
cover with a abstract watercolor painting

5Q Interview: UI Press Author Edward Ziff

Wednesday, September 18, 2024
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Sad Me of the Past // Episode 7: Melissa Mogollon

Tuesday, August 27, 2024
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From struggling artist to Tony triumph: Iowa Playwrights Workshop alum David Adjmi

Monday, August 12, 2024
Joe Fassler

Sad Me of the Past // Episode 6: Joe Fassler

Tuesday, August 6, 2024
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News Highlights

5Q Interview: Zhang Chu 张楚, IWP Resident

5Q Interview: Okamoto Kei 岡本啓, IWP Resident

5Q Interview: Nathalie Chang, IWP Resident

5Q Interview: Anna Davtyan Աննա Դավթյան, IWP Resident

UI Professor Kaveh Akbar's Novel "Martyr!" on Obama's Summer Reading List

UI Translation Program Alum in the New York Times

Ethan Hawke joined Stephen Colbert on The Late Show & took a moment to celebrate the excellence of The Iowa Writers' Workshop, where Flannery O'Connor studied in the 1940s.

Two UI faculty members, Kaveh Akbar (English) and Jamel Brinkley (Iowa Writers' Workshop) received the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship

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

& More

5Q Interview: Anna Davtyan Աննա Դավթյան, IWP Resident

"I have the full confidence that anything deeply private is completely universal. So I think what is privately Armenian and privately mine is good literature for everyone to read."

UI Professor Kaveh Akbar's Novel "Martyr!" on Obama's Summer Reading List

UI Translation Program Alum in the New York Times

Ethan Hawke joined Stephen Colbert on The Late Show & took a moment to celebrate the excellence of The Iowa Writers' Workshop, where Flannery O'Connor studied in the 1940s.

Two UI faculty members, Kaveh Akbar (English) and Jamel Brinkley (Iowa Writers' Workshop) received the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship

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

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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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