The Writing University

Find us at AWP 25 Los Angeles!

Swing by and say hi at our University of Iowa AWP25 Bookfair booths: 825, 827, 829, 831. We will have gifts for alums and educators, as well as coffee and cookie hours!

IOWA at AWP LA

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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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The Writing University Podcast Network

At the Writing University, we're devoted to delivering the most enlightening, educational and entertaining podcasts from the University of Iowa's creative writing programs. We gather all our offerings together here for you to peruse and enjoy!

Upcoming Events

English Department VIEWS: Jonathan Lethem Reading

Wednesday, March 26, 2025 7:00pm to 8:00pm

English-Philosophy Building

English Department VIEWS presents: Jonathan Lethem. Jonathan Lethem’s genre-defying fiction weaves the conventions of noirs, westerns, science fiction, and graphic novels into something both evocative and wholly original. The “bard of Brooklyn” (LitHub) is the author of more than a dozen books — including the much-lauded novels "Motherless Brooklyn" and "The Fortress of Solitude" — and the winner of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. Books will be available for purchase.

Live from Prairie Lights | Stuart Nadler

Monday, March 31, 2025 7:00pm

Prairie Lights Books

Stuart Nadler will read from his new novel, Rooms for Vanishing. Stuart Nadler is a recipient of the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation, and the author of two novels, Wise Men and The Inseparables, and a story collection, The Book of Life. His work has been named a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, and an Amazon Book of the Year. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was a Truman Capote Fellow and a Teaching...

Live from Prairie Lights | Karen Russell in conversation with Kaveh Akbar

Wednesday, April 2, 2025 7:00pm

Prairie Lights Books

Karen Russell will read from her new novel, The Antidote, in conversation with Kaveh Akbar. Karen Russell is the author of five books of fiction, including the NYT bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She is a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the recipient of two National Magazine Awards for Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, the 2023 Bottari Lattes Grinzane prize, the 2024 Mary McCarthy Award, and selected for the National Book...

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Latest Articles

5Q Interview: Irene Rodrigo, MFA Candidate in the Spanish Creative Writing Program

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Sad Me of the Past // Episode 13: Curtis Sittenfeld

Monday, March 24, 2025

5Q Interview: Jessica Alexander, an instructor at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival

Thursday, March 13, 2025

5Q Interview: Laura Jaramillo, instructor at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival

Friday, March 7, 2025

5Q Interview: Kat O'Brien, instructor at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival

Thursday, March 6, 2025

Sad Me of the Past // Episode 12: Josh Parkinson

Friday, February 14, 2025

5Q Interview: Spencer Lane Jones, an MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Writing Program

Monday, February 10, 2025

Sad Me of the Past // Episode 11: Gina Welch

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

5Q Interview: UI Press Author Erika Morillo

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Sad Me of the Past // Episode 10: Ada Zhang

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

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News Highlights

UI Playwright brings Iowa historical figure to life

⮑ https://stories.uiowa.edu

UI Professor Travis Vogan's stunning book on the artist LeRoy Neiman reviewed in The Wall Street Journal

⮑ The Wall Street Journal

CAMILLE DUNGY NAMED 2024 PAUL ENGLE PRIZE WINNER

⮑ UNESCO City of Literature

‘Sad Me of the Past’ podcast connects Iowa writers to their younger selves

⮑ The Daily Iowan

Two Workshop alumni awarded National Medals in the Humanities: Joy Harjo and Juan Filipe Herrera

⮑ The White House

5Q Interview: Anna Davtyan Աննա Դավթյան, IWP Resident

⮑ International Writing Program

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

⮑ X.com

UI Translation Program Alum in the New York Times

⮑ 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

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Share Your News!

Are you connected to the University of Iowa's writing programs and have news to share? We want to hear about it! If you have a book coming out, or are teaching a class, or doing a talk or lecture, or anything else -- we want to know and share in your success. Send us an update!

Featured Writer

Rita Dove

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

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."

-Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1992)

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