The Writing University conducts a series of interviews with writers while they are in Iowa City participating in the various University of Iowa writing programs. We sit down with authors to ask about their work, their process and their descriptions of home.

Today we are speaking with Heidie Senseman, an MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Writing Program. 

Heidie Senseman is a second-year MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Writing Program. She teaches in UIowa’s Department of Rhetoric and won a 2024 Doug Trank Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching & Mentoring. Heidie will be a Marcus Bach Fellow in Spring 2026. Her essays have appeared in Vita Poetica, Dappled Things, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Ekstasis, Plough, and other publications.
 

1. Can you tell us a little bit about what brought you to the University of Iowa? 
In 2022, my husband and I began applying to funded grad programs across the country—him, to physics PhDs, and me, to CNF MFAs—and praying we’d get in somewhere together. UIowa ended up being that somewhere, and we couldn’t be more grateful to be here. 
 

2. What is the inspiration for your work right now? 
I’m working on a collection of essays about faith, art, and conversion—more specifically, about the way devotional art can act as a sort of vehicle for “translating” religious ideas into a vocabulary that’s more hospitable to secular audiences. A Christian convert myself, I’ve spent years searching for the right words or images to understand my own religious transformation. Time and time again, art has been the portal or “access point” by which I’ve been able to make sense of my faith—and communicate bits of it to others. 
 

3. Do you have a daily writing routine? 
My writing routine changes with each semester’s schedule, but I try to get something on the page (or on an iPhone note…) every weekday. This term, I’m doing most of my writing on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings, plus smaller pockets of time in the afternoons. I don’t write on the weekends, though; having a regular break gives me the breathing room I need to return to a project with energy. 
 

4. What are you reading right now? Are you reading for research or pleasure?
Research and pleasure overlap in my reading life, but whatever my focus is at a given moment, I strive for variety on my booklist. Current titles include G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories (detective fiction), Christian Wiman’s Zero at the Bone (poetry, memoir, criticism, & theology), Tara Isabella Burton’s Strange Rites (reportage & cultural criticism), and Vaclav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless (a longform political essay). 
 

5. Tell us about where you are from - what are some favorite details you would like to share about your home?
I’m originally from a small town in northern Illinois known for its nuclear power plant, quarter-mile dragway, and stretch on the Rock River. My childhood home is across the (gravel) road from a cattle farm. I like to think of my time in Iowa City as my “city girl” era. 

***

Thank you!