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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

Live from Prairie Lights | Cass Donish & Melissa Dickey promotional image

Live from Prairie Lights | Cass Donish & Melissa Dickey

Tuesday, October 8, 2024 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
Poets Cass Donish and Melissa Dickey will read from their latest books; Your Dazzling Death and Ordinary Entanglement. Cass Donish will read from Your Dazzling Death. “An elegy is a conversation that never ends. As if death didn’t exist. As if speech isn’t sometimes silence. As if poetry isn’t often the little that’s left. These poems — brilliant, devastating — are evidence that a woman was once alive, and loved, and that that, the all of it, is now equally over and not over: a complicated...
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...
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Latest Articles

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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
melissa mogollon

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
peter mishler photo

5Q Interview: UI Press Author Peter Mishler

Wednesday, July 24, 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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