iowa school of creative writing

General Catalog

Creative writing (iowa writers' workshop).

This is the first version of the 2024–25 General Catalog. Please check back regularly for changes. The final edition and the historical PDF will be published during the fall semester.

Graduate degree: MFA in English

Faculty: https://writersworkshop.uiowa.edu/faculty

Website: https://writersworkshop.uiowa.edu/

The Creative Writing Program (Iowa Writers' Workshop) is a world-renowned graduate program for fiction writers and poets. Founded in 1936, it was the first creative writing program in the United States to offer a degree, and it became a model for many contemporary writing programs. In addition to its Master of Fine Arts program, it also offers writing courses for undergraduates.

The Iowa Writers' Workshop has been home to thousands of remarkable writers, including Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, Rita Dove, John Irving, James Alan McPherson, Philip Levine, Jane Smiley, Michael Cunningham, Sandra Cisneros, Denis Johnson, Jorie Graham, Ann Patchett, Lan Samantha Chang, D.A. Powell, Nathan Englander, Yiyun Li, Eleanor Catton, Angela Flournoy, Garth Greenwell, Yaa Gyasi, and Jamel Brinkley. The program's faculty and alumni include winners of virtually every major literary award, including seventeen winners of the Pulitzer Prize, six recent U.S. Poets Laureate, and numerous winners of the National Book Award, MacArthur Foundation Fellowships, and other major honors. In 2003, the Iowa Writers' Workshop received a National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities—the first awarded to a university and only the second given to an institution rather than an individual.

The Creative Writing Program offers courses for students from other programs of study; summer courses are open to undergraduate and graduate students.

To learn more about the Creative Writing Program's history and faculty, visit the Iowa Writers' Workshop website.

Graduate Program of Study

• Master of Fine Arts in English

Creative Writing—Writers' Workshop Courses

The Creative Writing Program offers courses for undergraduates as well as graduate students. Enrollment in some graduate-level courses requires admission to the MFA program. See "Courses" in the Department of English section of the catalog for course descriptions and prerequisites to enrollment.

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The Writing University

Menu drawer options, writing at iowa.

More than 40 Pulitzer Prize winners. Seven U.S. Poets Laureate. Countless award-winning playwrights, screenwriters, journalists, translators, novelists and poets. The University of Iowa’s writing programs shape the landscape of American literature.

Departments & Programs

Iowa Writers' Workshop

Iowa Playwrights Workshop

Nonfiction Writing Program

Spanish Creative Writing MFA

International Writing Program

Translation Workshop

Center for the Book

Department of English

School of Journalism and Mass Communication

The Department of Rhetoric

Screenwriting Workshop

Carver College of Medicine Writing

Iowa Summer Writing Festival

Iowa Young Writers' Studio

Undergraduate Certificate in Writing

Magid Center for Writing

The Iowa Review

English and Creative Writing Major

The University of Iowa Press

The Writing Center

BA in Translation

Belin-Blank Summer Writing Residency

The Daily Iowan

Iowa Youth Writing Project

Writing centers & resources.

• UI Writing Center
• Iowa Writers Residence Hall
• Writing Center at Iowa Law
• The Teaching and Writing Center, History
• The Judith Frank Business Communications Center
• Journalism Writing Center
• The Writing Resource at the College of Education
• The Accountancy Writing Center
• Hanson Center for Technical Communication, College of Engineering

The History of Writing at Iowa

The University of Iowa’s tradition of great writing originates in its early and enduring commitment to the creative arts. Under the leadership of Carl Seashore in 1922, Iowa became the first university in the United States to accept creative projects as theses for advanced degrees. Traditionally, graduate study culminates in the writing of a scholarly thesis, but, under this new provision, works including a collection of poems, a musical composition, or a series of paintings could be presented to the Graduate College instead. Thus, Iowa established a standard for the Master of Fine Arts degree and secured a place for writers and artists in the academy.

The University of Iowa’s writing community flourished in the wake of this commitment to the arts. Though creative writing coursework was offered at Iowa as early as 1897, the curriculum expanded and diversified in the 1920s. Writers came from all over the country to enroll in courses in playwriting, fiction, and poetry writing.

A new method for the study of writing emerged in these classes: the writing workshop. In a writing workshop, a senior writer leads a discussion about a work written by a member of the class; workshop students share impressions, advice, and analysis. As Paul Engle , director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and founder of the International Writing Program , observed: “the students benefited greatly from hearing a variety of attitudes toward their work. It was like publishing then being reviewed.” Workshop students receive honest and immediate feedback about their writing and become better critics of their own work. Many also discover the sympathetic but critical readers who they will turn to throughout their careers.

The Program in Creative Writing, known worldwide as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop , was founded in 1936 with the gathering together of writers from the poetry and fiction workshops. It was the first creative writing program in the country, and it became the prototype for more than 300 writing programs, many of which were founded by Workshop alumni. The Workshop remains the most prestigious creative writing program in the country and one of the most selective graduate programs of any kind, typically admitting fewer than five percent of its applicants.

Since its establishment, the Workshop has been the cornerstone of the writing community at the University of Iowa. In its early years, the program enjoyed a series of distinguished visitors, such as Robert Frost , Robert Penn Warren , Dylan Thomas , John Berryman , and Robert Lowell . Workshop students met with early success in publishing their work; thus began what Workshop director Frank Conroy would describe as the Workshop’s “self-fulfilling prophecy.” Talented writers teach and study here; this compels more to come and do the same. Iowa's perennial society of writers has grown considerably since the early days of the Workshop; this community has been a dynamic and sustaining force for growth and change. The logic of the “self-fulfilling prophecy” applies at an institutional level, as well as the individual. The University of Iowa set an early precedent for innovation in the study and practice of writing. This precedent created an environment where further advances, including the following, are possible, and likely:

• Students and faculty in UI writing programs collaborate with International Writing Program writers to translate new works of poetry and fiction in English.
• Each summer, students and alumni of the Writers’ Workshop mentor a new generation of authors at the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio , a summer camp for gifted high school-aged writers from around the country.
• A new Screenwriting MFA , where students are instructed on practical skills and knowledge needed to become successful members of the screenwriting industry
• Students from a variety of programs explore and create interpretations of print and print culture by studying book arts in the UI Center for the Book .
•   Nonfiction Writing Program organized “NonfictionNow,” a conference to explore the state of nonfiction writing.
• The Patient Voice Project, created by students at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and Arts Share, offers creative writing classes to chronically ill hospital patients.

Iowa’s tradition of writing has been guided by the principle that, though writing is a solitary practice, it’s one significantly enriched by the presence of other writers. As Paul Engle wrote, “Our plan gives the writer a place where he can be himself, confronting the hazards and hopes of his own talent, and at the same time he can measure his capacity against a variety of others.” Through the years, some of the best writers in the world have come here to deepen their understanding of the craft of writing. Since 1939, 40 individuals with ties to the University of Iowa have been awarded Pulitzer Prizes ; four recent U.S. Poet Laureates have been either students or faculty at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2006, Orhan Pamuk, a 1985 fellow of the International Writing Program, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. While the UI has been host to many award-winning authors, Iowa is known as The Writing University because countless numbers of writers at varying stages in their development have found a literary home here. High school students can study writing at the Young Writers’ Studio, and over 1,500 writers each year participate in over 130 workshops at the Summer Writing Festival. The departments of English, Journalism, Theater, and Cinema and Comparative Literature offer writing classes to undergraduates, and Iowa’s graduate programs in playwriting, nonfiction, translation, and journalism are some of the best in the country. The Writers’ Workshop is the country’s oldest and most celebrated graduate program in creative writing, and the International Writing Program hosts accomplished writers from around the world each fall. The following timeline provides an overview of important dates in the history of writing at Iowa. For more information about the writers who have taught and studied at Iowa, please visit the Writers page . or our LitCity project . A directory of all of the writing programs, as well as programs affiliated with writing at Iowa, is available from the Programs page.  

About the Writing University

The Virtual Writing University (VWU) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary initiative sponsored by the Graduate College and the Office of the Provost at the University of Iowa. The project launched in fall, 2006, with the mandate to create a virtual space for the University of Iowa's writing community. Its primary venue is the Writing University website ( www.writinguniversity.org ), a portal to the programs, news, and events associated with writing at Iowa, and a platform for special VWU Projects, such as LitCity, The Undergrad Writing Portal, First-Year Seminars and the Eleventh Hour Podcast .

People Support for the Virtual Writing University comes from many different areas of the University of Iowa community. We are grateful for the many staff and faculty members who have contributed their creative, technological, and administrative expertise to this initiative.  

Writing University Senior Editor

Lauren Haldeman, Senior Editor, The University of Iowa

Writing University Advisory Panel

Aron Aji, director of the Translation Workshop Micah Bateman, Assistant Professor, SLIS Lynne Nugent, Editor-in-Chief, The Iowa Review Lan Samantha Chang, director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Joan Kjaer, Strategic Communications Officer, International Programs Communications and Relations Amy Margolis, director of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program

Writing University Director

Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program

Writing University Archive

Thomas Keegan, Director, Digital Library Services Mark Anderson, Digital Initiatives Librarian

LitCity Project

Thomas Keegan, Director, Digital Library Services Jim Cremer, Consultant, Computer Science Department Loren Glass, Faculty, English Department Nicole Dudley, Lead Database Developer

History of Writing at Iowa

Robin Hemley Michael Allen Potter, Graduate Assistant

Technological Support

Wendy Brown, Web Production, University Relations Web Unit Ken Clinkenbeard, Instructional Services, Academic Technologies Ann Freerks, Designer, University Relations Web Unit Andrew Rinner, Research Services, Academic Technologies Paul Soderdahl, director of Library Information Technology, UI Libraries

Biographies of Writing University Project Leaders

Lauren Haldeman is the senior editor of the Writing University website. She is the author of Team Photograph , Instead of Dying (winner of the 2017 Colorado Prize for Poetry), Calenday, and The Eccentricity is Zero . Her work has appeared in Poetry, Tin House, The Colorado Review, The Iowa Review, Fence and others. A graphic novelist and poet, she’s received an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award and visiting artist fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Carnegie Mellon University, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Christopher Merrill ’s books include four collections of poetry, Brilliant Water , Workbook , Fevers & Tides , and Watch Fire , for which he received the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; translations of Aleš Debeljak’s Anxious Moments and The City and the Child ; several edited volumes, among them, The Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature and From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O’Keeffe as Icon ; and three books of nonfiction, The Grass of Another Country: A Journey Through the World of Soccer , The Old Bridge: The Third Balkan War and the Age of the Refugee , and Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars . His work has been translated into sixteen languages. He has held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and now directs the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa.

Writers' Workshop

How to apply - mfa, how to apply for the mfa, application deadline:  december 15th.

The next appliction cycle will begin October 1st

To be considered for admission to the graduate program, you must complete the online application, including all supplemental materials, and mail a hard copy of your manuscript and a manuscript cover sheet directly to the Writers’ Workshop (102 Dey House). The manuscript must be  postmarked by  December 15.

Set Up Your Graduate Application

* Note: It can take up to 24 hours for the online application to be processed and for you to receive your HawkID.

• To begin your application, sign in or create a new account on the University of Iowa Office of Admissions page and provide the required basic information.
• “English: Creative Writing” on the Department or Program dropdown
• enter the genre(s) (fiction, poetry, or both) in which you are applying in the “Area of interest or specialization” text box
• select “MFA (thesis)” on the “Degree” dropdown menu
• The fee to complete the application is $60 ($100 for international students). If you would like to apply for a fee waiver, follow the fee waiver instructions. There is no fee waiver for international applicants.
• Once your application has been submitted and processed, you will receive an email with instructions on how to establish your HawkID and password (this can take up to 24 hours ). You will need your HawkID and password to upload additional application documents.

Application Procedure

Mail your manuscript.

To apply to the Writers’ Workshop, you must send, in hard copy, a printed, unbound manuscript of your best work, accompanied by a completed manuscript coversheet .

For poetry: Please submit ten to twelve poems.

For fiction: Please submit at least two short stories, or two or more sections of a novel, or a combination of novel excerpts and shorter work. Fiction manuscripts should be double-spaced and typically range in length from 30 to 80 pages (please do not send more than 80 pages). Send what you feel is your strongest work.

The manuscript and manuscript coversheet CANNOT solely be submitted online. Please mail the manuscript and manuscript cover sheet to:

Iowa Writers' Workshop 102 Dey House University of Iowa 507 N. Clinton St. Iowa City, IA 52242-1000

If applying to both fiction and poetry, send both manuscripts in the same envelope and include ONE cover sheet with both genres selected.

Please note that nonfiction prose, screenplays, or critical writings, though of some interest, are not acceptable as the basis for admissions decisions. Those interested in playwriting should not apply to the Creative Writing program, but directly to the Playwrights Workshop , Department of Theatre Arts; those with an interest in literary nonfiction should apply to the Nonfiction Writing Program . Those interested in screenwriting should apply to Cinematic Arts .

ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS: 

• DO NOT email the manuscript. In order to evaluate your manuscript, we need to receive a physical copy. We also request a digital upload, via MyUI , as a backup (see below). The digital upload DOES NOT replace the mailed hard copy.
• Please do not bind the manuscript (paperclip or staple is acceptable)
• We cannot accept updated/revised manuscripts after your initial submission
• Please allow up to four weeks for us to acknowledge your manuscript via your online admissions profile ; if your manuscript has not been acknowledged by January 20th, please call the office to make sure it’s been received; please note: we cannot check on manuscript status before January 20
• Due to the large number of submissions, we cannot provide feedback on your work.

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Additional Application Materials

Once you've set up your Graduate Admissions application , you will receive an email with instructions on how to establish your HawkID and password (this can take up to 24 hours ). Follow the instructions to set up your HawkID and password. If you cannot find the email, contact [email protected] .

Once you set up your HawkID and password, Sign in to your admissions profile on MyUI to upload all additional application documents.

• Upload Your Mailed Manuscript   We are requesting that all applicants upload their manuscript on  MyUI in addition to mailing the manuscript by the December 15 deadline.  
• Statement of Purpose   Include your purpose in pursuing graduate study, any research you wish to pursue, and your future vocational goals. No particular length is required. To be uploaded to MyUI .  
• Graduate Funding Application   Please fill out the Graduate Funding Application in your Admissions Profile on MyUI .  
• Department Funding Application   Please fill out the Department Funding Application in your Admissions Profile on MyUI .  
• Letters of Recommendation   Three letters should be written by instructors or colleagues who are best able to assess your potential for graduate study and teaching. The letters should be submitted by January 20 .  Please provide contact info for you recommenders through your MyUI Admissions Profile. Once contact info has been submitted, each recommender will receive an email from the Office of Admissions with instructions for how to upload a recommendation letter to the Office of Admissions. The University of Iowa accepts letters of recommendation through Interfolio .  
• Resume or CV (optional)   If you choose, you can upload your resume or CV to your Admissions Profile in MyUI .  
• Unofficial copy of academic transcripts   Please upload unofficial academic transcripts for undergraduate and graduate-level coursework, if applicable, to your Admissions Profile in MyUI (current University of Iowa students can skip this step).    Applicants who are accepted for admission will subsequently be required to send official academic transcripts to the University of Iowa Office of Admissions.  
• General GRE scores – not required   The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop does not require GRE scores for admission.  

To Complete Your Application

Your application is complete once you have uploaded all of the required documents to your admissions profile on MyUI , provided contact information for your recommenders, and mailed your manuscript to the Writers’ Workshop.

Decisions will be made in March or early April.

The University of Iowa prohibits discrimination in employment, educational programs, and activities on the basis of race, creed, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, pregnancy, disability, genetic information, status as a U.S. veteran, service in the U.S. military, sexual orientation, gender identity, associational preferences, or any other classification that deprives the person of  consideration as an individual. The university also affirms its commitment to providing equal opportunities and equal access to  university facilities. For additional information on nondiscrimination policies, contact the Director, Office of Equal Opportunity and  Diversity, the University of Iowa, 202 Jessup Hall, Iowa City, IA, 52242-1316, 319-335-0705 (voice), 319-335-0697 (TDD), [email protected] . If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation in order to participate in these programs, please contact the Writers' Workshop at (319) 335-0416.

Admission to the Graduate College

The current requirements for admission to the Graduate College are possession of an undergraduate degree at an accredited college or university, and achievement of an undergraduate grade-point average of 3.0, based on a 4.0 scale. Students who can present other substantial evidence of probable success in graduate work at the Writers' Workshop are sometimes admitted provisionally in spite of a lower grade-point average. Applications from students who have graduated from foreign universities are considered individually by the Graduate College. International Applicants: Please closely review the admissions requirements on the Graduate Admissions website, and contact the Graduate Admissions office if you have any questions.

Good writing skills are an asset in any field of study or career. The  Certificate in Writing , sponsored by the Magid Center for Writing, allows students to benefit from the university's wide-ranging Writing programs and resources by pursuing a concentration in Writing related to their academic success, career goals, or personal interests. 

The certificate may be earned by any student admitted to the University of Iowa who is not concurrently enrolled in a UI graduate or professional degree program.

Certificate in Writing students may not earn the Bachelor of Applied Studies degree with the Creative Writing emphasis. 

The University of Iowa is known nationally and internationally for its writing programs, particularly for its top-ranked graduate programs in creative writing ( Iowa Writers' Workshop ) and nonfiction writing. It also offers numerous discipline-based undergraduate and graduate programs that emphasize writing, and several of its colleges have their own writing centers.

Certificate students have the opportunity to participate in the Iowa City writing community through activities such as attending readings and lectures; presenting their own work in public; working with professional journals, newspapers, or other publications; and volunteering or interning with the Iowa Youth Writing Project literacy outreach program.

For students interested in Writing, the university also offers a BA degree in English and Creative Writing through the Department of English.

Online Certificate in Writing

The online Certificate in Writing is designed for students who are unable to attend classes on campus, including distance education students, nondegree-seeking students, and international students. The program allows students to take advantage of Iowa's impressive culture of writing from anywhere in the world. Visit  Magid Center for Writing  to learn more about the online certificate.

In addition to sponsoring the Certificate in Writing, the Magid Center also publishes several  student literary magazines  and supports the  Iowa Writers living learning community  in the UI residence halls. The Magid Center is home to the Iowa Youth Writing Project, a K-12 literacy outreach non-profit; the  Iowa Young Writers' Studio , a selective summer camp for aspiring high school writers; and the  Iowa Summer Writing Festival .

 Information

On-campus students who are interested in this certificate program may enjoy living in the  Iowa Writers Living Learning Community  in the UI residence halls.

To earn the Certificate in Writing, students must complete a minimum of 22 semester hours (s.h.) of credit, including 12 s.h. in core courses, 9 s.h. in focused electives, and 1-3 s.h. in a capstone. 

Capstone options include Guided Capstone Portfolio, Independent Writing Project, Writing-Related Internship, or an Additional Writing Course. 

You'll explore writing and develop your own writing skills in a range of genres and for different purposes, such as creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry); writing for the professions (including the arts, business, journalism, science, and others); writing for organizations; and writing related to personal interests. You'll also participate in writing community activities.

Up to 6 s.h. of transfer credit is allowed. For questions regarding the transfer credit policy, contact the director.

Visit  Writing in the UI General Catalog  to learn about required coursework.

Literary Publishing Track

This track provides an overview of what it takes to work in the publishing industry. Students will learn the process of acquiring manuscripts, choosing stories, editing and proofreading the works, and creating the final design. The Literary Publishing track is open to students in any major.

Iowa surpasses Harvard, Princeton as No. 2 for writing

The University of Iowa is tied with Yale as the No. 2 university in the country for writing, according to the latest rankings from U.S. News & World Report . Iowa is the only public university in the top 10, behind No. 1 Brown University, and is ahead of universities such as Harvard, Cornell, Duke, and Princeton.

The ranking, which debuted in 2020, recognizes the importance of teaching writing and communication in all disciplines. In 2020, Iowa was 13th overall, and in 2021 was No. 10. For the third consecutive year, Iowa is the top-ranked public institution.

Strong writing and communication skills in any field of study help students find success when they enter the job market or apply to graduate school.

“If you look at what most employers want these days, it’s what I call higher-order skills, and those are typically related to communication: How well you work in teams, how clearly you express yourself, and how effectively you use analytical skills in problem-solving situations,” says UI President Barbara Wilson. “The emphasis on writing and communication at Iowa benefits all students.”

Iowa is known as “The Writing University” largely because of world-renowned graduate programs such as the  Iowa Writers’ Workshop  and  Nonfiction Writing Program , but the university’s commitment to helping all students build strong writing and communication skills is evident across campus and in every field of study.

“This ranking reflects the breadth of our commitment to writing excellence at Iowa,” says Kevin Kregel, executive vice president and provost. “The world knows us for our unparalleled writing programs, but we are just as proud of the writing-related resources we provide to all students, whatever their field of study. Employers care about writing and communication skills, and they know graduates from Iowa bring those skills to their organizations.”

In the annual US News & World Report 2023 Best Colleges rankings, Iowa is 83rd among all public and private universities, the same ranking it received last year, and 35th among publics, a slight dip from last year’s No. 33 slot. Iowa also continues to be among the colleges and universities named as a best value.

In the College of Nursing, the Bachelor of Science in Nursing is ranked ninth, up one spot from last year.

In undergraduate business programs, the Tippie College of Business ranks 34th, up two spots from last year, with its accounting program jumping 15 spots to 35th overall.

In undergraduate engineering programs at universities that also offer doctoral programs, Iowa is ranked 68th. According to the report, research at the graduate level often influences the undergraduate curriculum, and engineering schools with doctoral programs tend to have the widest possible range of undergraduate engineering courses and program offerings.

In undergraduate computer science programs, Iowa ranked No. 65, up six spots from last year. A fast-growing course of study within Iowa's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, its graduates join many computer and technology-related professions that are identified as in-need across the state of Iowa.

The rankings also list Iowa as 51st on the Best Colleges for Veterans list.

The full rankings and methodology can be found on the U.S. News website .

Magid Center for Writing

The Certificate in Writing

Enhance your academic, creative, and professional communication skills by focusing on the written word.

Writing matters. Improve your skills today, on-campus or online.

Explore and develop your writing skills across a wide range of genres and for varied purposes through the University of Iowa's certificate in writing program.

With a flexible curriculum that allows you to enhance your knowledge of academic, creative, and professional communication strategies, the certificate in writing is open to any student admitted to the University of Iowa who is not enrolled in a UI graduate or professional degree program. Writing matters, we can help: declare or apply today!

We can help you get started!

“The Writing Certificate far exceeded my expectations. I would recommend this program to students of all majors. Being an effective written communciator is a great asset to have for any career.” - Erin, Finance BBA

NOTICE: The University of Iowa Center for Advancement is an operational name for the State University of Iowa Foundation, an independent, Iowa nonprofit corporation organized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, publicly supported charitable entity working to advance the University of Iowa. Please review its full disclosure statement.

The Nonfiction Writing Program

The Nonfiction Writing Program is one of the oldest—and boldest—nonfiction programs in the nation, located in America's most cherished literary city.

Our faculty are outstanding mentors because they are published working writers, nationally recognized scholars, and pedagogical pathbreakers. Through small workshop-style classes, they will help you hone your creative talent and empower you to tell your stories through essays, memoir, literary journalism, travelogue, biography, and other genres. And you'll have unique opportunities to immerse yourself in writing, from attending readings to editing journals to selecting winners of national awards. 

For the past forty years, the Nonfiction Writing Program has encouraged students to explore new approaches to creative nonfiction while also developing an appreciation for the deep history of the genre.

In small, aesthetically diverse courses such as Forms of the Essay, Readings in Nonfiction, Radio Essays, Literary Journalism, Memoir, Travelogues, and A History of the Essay, the Nonfiction Writing Program strives to create an atmosphere that’s both supportive and challenging, generating discussions and debates in a dynamic community.

During the program’s three years of study, our students receive funding through fellowships, research assistantships, and teaching positions as instructors in writing and literature. They're also eligible for an additional $50,000 in research grants every year to help them pursue their own writing projects.

Occasionally our students travel abroad in a series of overseas writing workshops that are led by the program's faculty, and while on campus they help judge the Iowa Prize in Literary Nonfiction and the annual Krause Essay Prize for innovative essays.

Outside of the classroom, students in the NWP help run a variety of literary organizations, including two highly popular reading series for graduate students, Anthology and Speakeasy. They help read submissions for the national literary magazine The Iowa Review and also edit their own journal The Essay Review .  And finally, they give back, volunteering their time as writing instructors in the Lloyd-Jones Institute for Outreach, through which we offer free and immersive classes in creative writing to people throughout Iowa and beyond.

Krause Essay Prize

Founded in 2006, the Krause Essay Prize is awarded each year to the work that best exemplifies the art of essaying.

Recent NWP News

Krause Essay Prize Ceremony to Celebrate Chris Dennis

NWP Students Barr and Jones Awarded Marcus Bach Fellowship

NWP Alumni Abildskov and Taffa Awarded NEA Fellowships

Congratulations, bennett sims, finalist for the story prize.

NWP MFA student Fi Okupe Founds Nonfiction Award for Nigerian Women

NWP MFA Student Liv Kane Awarded Magdalena Prize

NWP MFA Student Richard Frailing Talks of Essaying in the BlueGAP Project

The Team "Writer's Strike" Wins the NWP's 116th Annual Bowling Tournament

NWP MFA student Fi Okupe uncovers history and discovers stories through unique assistantship

Recent publications by nwp alumni.

NOTICE: The University of Iowa Center for Advancement is an operational name for the State University of Iowa Foundation, an independent, Iowa nonprofit corporation organized as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, publicly supported charitable entity working to advance the University of Iowa. Please review its full disclosure statement.

School of Social Work

Creative writing for social workers.

32nd Annual Creative Writing Workshop for Social Workers

July 14-17, 2023 

REGISTER  

About the Workshop

The University of Iowa is known nationally as " The Writing University ," and our institution boasts a rich tradition of great writing and an early and enduring commitment to the creative arts. Iowa’s tradition of writing has been guided by the principle that, though writing is a solitary practice, it’s one significantly enriched by interaction with other writers. There has also been a growing focus in recent years on how writing and language are critical in so many other professions and pursuits beyond the purely literary. It's fitting, then, that we continue to offer an annual opportunity for social workers and other helping professionals to gather in a workshop space for an intensive experience to work on their writing craft and learn how it can be leveraged, both in practice and in reflective self-care. 

This workshop will be conducted in person. Some assignments will be completed on your own time and some will be done during class sessions with the instructor and fellow participants.

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

• Improve creative writing skill in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays, blogs etc.
• Understand how writing can be used as a professional tool in human services work as counselors, educators, advocates, researchers, and practitioners.

The Process

The seminar will meet in person in Iowa City over the course of 4 days. Each day includes assignments completed on your own time and interaction in real time with the instructor and fellow participants. Activities include a mixture of presentations from guest authors, writing instruction and practice, and peer critiques of participants’ work. Several hours are reserved for one-on-one coaching sessions with the lead instructor. Participants may be beginners or experienced--and sometimes even published--writers. Most participants have not previously attended a writing workshop, or even thought of themselves as writers. Diversity of experience, and an active interest and curiosity about the possibilities inherent in creative writing, are the essential ingredients for a fresh and exciting workshop experience.

Cost & CEUs

$525 / 24 CEU hours — Participants who complete the workshop are eligible to enroll in future sessions of our Master Class in Creative Writing for Social Workers.

About the Presenter

Ellen Szabo, M.Ed. , is the primary writing instructor for the course. She is the founder of Szabo Creative Consulting, promoting the use of creative writing for personal investigation, enrichment and social change. She earned her B.A. from Harvard College, with a concentration in English and American Literature, and her M.Ed. from Columbia University Teacher’s College, in Counseling Psychology. She writes and teaches with focus on how innovation and creativity can illuminate, inspire and advocate compassionate transformation. Guest speakers will share experiences with projects related to creative writing for social change, journaling for personal growth, and/or the written word as a tool for enhancing social justice.

CLASS IS LIMITED TO 12 PARTICIPANTS.

Creative Writing Master Class for Social Workers

July 18-19, 2023 

About the Master Class

Master Class will build upon the principles and instruction from the four-day Creative Writing for Social Work seminar. This workshop illuminates and explores various techniques for discovering and amplifying the spirit and purpose of each participant’s writing, with emphasis on how creative expression can facilitate personal transformation.

The focus is on exploration, experimentation, and discovery of each person’s unique writing voice. In a supportive, stimulating atmosphere, participants build upon their creative writing skills with additional instruction, writing prompts, and facilitated discussion of their work.

This workshop will be conducted in an in-person format. Some assignments will be completed on your own time and some will be done during live class sessions with the instructor and fellow participants.

Prerequisite : Completion of the four-day Creative Writing for Social Work workshop

CLASS IS LIMITED TO 6 PARTICIPANTS.

$525 / 12 CEU hours

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How Creative Writing Programs De-Politicized Fiction

In the shadow of the Cold War, the rise of creative writing programs and ‘show don’t tell’ philosophy drained fiction of its political bite.

• Annie Levin

If I were to devise a scene that showed the starting point for modern American literature, I would begin in a creative writing classroom in the 1950s. A group of young people has been corralled into a seminar room where an instructor, in horn rim glasses and herringbone blazer, is torturing the adverbs out of first drafts. The writing program has been created in the hope that under no circumstances should these students engage in ideology or broad societal critique in their work. Instead, the individual was to be the ceiling and the floor of literature. 

Eric Bennett, an English professor and graduate of the MFA program at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, in 2015 published Workshops of Empire , a book about how creative writing emerged as a discipline used to promote capitalist values during the Cold War. In America’s creative writing programs, Bennett writes, “the artistic mind found protection from the dangerous influence of Communism.” Through university programs, “the aspiring writer embraced the dream of a nuclear family and a steady job at the same time he was learning the techniques of the modernist form.” Writers, like everyone else, had to get dressed in the morning and head to the office. It was the Cold War. Political quietism and introspection were in. Communism and broad societal critique were out. Literary fashion followed the conservative Flannery O’Connor, a writer who, however brilliant, dealt exclusively in the scouring of atomized souls. Left-leaning authors who wrote with a wide scope about communities and politics—writers like John Dos Passos, Langston Hughes, and John Steinbeck—were passé.

Following the passage of the GI Bill of 1944, which funded higher education for armed service members, creative writing programs began popping up across the nation after the war. They were mainly modeled on the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, established in 1936. Many were founded by graduates of that program. The design of these programs has essentially remained the same to this day. Up-and-coming writers are placed in micro-communities of competitive peers in isolated academic environments. They attend workshops, led by professional writers, in which new pieces of student writing are critiqued each week. Following these workshops, students are supposed to return to their work with a broadened perspective, enlightened by the opinions of their peers and professor.

Sandra Cisneros, author of the novel The House on Mango Street , earned an MFA at Iowa in 1978. Writing about the program in her 2015 memoir A House of My Own: Stories from My Life , she wrote, “How can art make a difference in the world? This was never asked at Iowa.” “In grad school, I’d never been trained to think of poems or stories as something that could change anyone’s life but the writer’s. I’d been trained to think about where a line ended or how best to work a metaphor. It was always the ‘how’ and not the ‘what’ we talked about in class.”

This emphasis on form over content was still common when I became a creative writing student thirty years later. As a student in the late aughts, I wrote an (overambitious) story in which a male sex worker, a drag queen, and a club bouncer discuss theology with a Catholic monk in a gay bar in Manhattan. When the story was workshopped, the professor went around the seminar table and asked everyone to draw a diagram of the bar. My classmates spent an hour analyzing this space: where the tables, dance floor, and exit were located in my fictional bar. Not one comment did I receive about the actual content of the story. It was all “how” and not “what.” The subject matter, the “what,” was treated as ornamental and didn’t enter into the analysis. Approaching the form of writing in this way can be useful: you clear away the facade and work on the foundation. Here, however, the foundation of my story was treated as if it was devoid of content. What mattered to my teacher was where the tables and chairs were. The moral dimensions of my story and its topic of sex work were pushed completely aside.

While divorcing the craft of writing from the content of writing is not explicitly anticommunist or pro-capitalist, it is notable that teaching writing in this way grew to popularity during the Cold War and was popularized by vocal anticommunists. Paul Engle, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop director from 1941 to 1964, fundraised for the program using explicitly anticommunist rhetoric: he communicated with private and public donors that Iowa was in the business of bringing writers together in one place to train them to compete against their ideologically-driven counterparts in the Soviet Union. In his essay “How Iowa Flattened Literature,” Eric Bennett writes that Engle was explicit in his political motivations in his fundraising for the program. “Iowa prospered on donations from conservative businessmen persuaded by Engle that the program fortified democratic values at home and abroad: It fought Communism,” Bennett writes. Through these efforts, Engle brought in money from the Rockefeller Foundation, The State Department, and CIA front groups the Farfield Foundation and the Asia Foundation.

These organizations were giving money to Iowa at the same time that the CIA was funding literary magazines worldwide through the Congress for Cultural Freedom. In the U.S., they supported The Kenyon Review , to this day one of the most prestigious literary reviews in the nation. The review was a proponent of The New Criticism , a form of literary criticism in which the critic avoids making reference to the historical, political, or personal context in which a work of literature was written. In The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters , Frances Stonor Saunders describes how the review’s founder, John Crowe Ransom, had ties to the CIA. He received funding from the CIA through the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and had some of his students recruited to the CIA. The Paris Review , another mainstream literary light influenced by the apolitical New Critics, began as a front group for the CIA. Its founder, Peter Mathiessen , was himself a CIA agent.

We know that the CIA was interested in art and literature during the Cold War. Exactly what impact this interest had on literature itself is hard to quantify. However, looking at the literature of the period through a wide angle lens, you can see a shift away from political literature or literature of broad cultural scope. When I was first studying literature in college, I started putting a dividing line between literary novels written before and after World War II. It seemed like the books from the before times were good at doing lots of things. They could world build and philosophize. They could be love story, adventure novel, and satire all in one. Books written after the war, however, could only do one thing at a time. Mostly that one thing was soul-searching or introspection. Serious postwar fiction, whether it was what I was being fed in school or read in the pages of The New Yorker , was about sad white people with relationship problems.

Cold War writers like John Updike, J.D. Salinger, Flannery O’Connor, and John Cheever—soul-scouring chroniclers of the small—were beloved of my baby boomer teachers in high school and college. When I was being educated, I was assigned John Updike’s often anthologized “A&P,” first published in 1961, in four separate academic classes. This is a story about a supermarket cashier who gets turned on by a teenage girl in a bathing suit. The narrator watches the girl and her friends wander through an A&P in bathing suits. The writing is gorgeous, and very much of its time: the girl’s bare chest in a strapless bathing suit is “like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light.” At the end of the story, the store manager tells the girls to put some clothes on. The cashier responds by quitting his job. His dramatic gesture isn’t perceived by the girls, and the cashier wanders away, sad and jobless. It ends, “My stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter.” That’s the entire story.

The writing is well crafted. It’s not a bad story. But not only does it foreground the male gaze and very little else, it also reads as though cut off from time and space and other people. The narrator’s coworker is “married, with two babies chalked up on his fuselage already.” His coworker cannot do anything so effeminate as to father babies, so he instead guns them down over Normandy. Slave to his hormones, the narrator doesn’t make choices. He reacts. One minute he is watching the girl blush, and the next he is throwing in his bowtie and walking out the door. The store, the character, the scenario, are all vehicles for describing a girl with “a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit.” Lean, sculpted sentences all. But in service of what, exactly?

I don’t believe that fiction must have deep societal meaning. Of course, stories can exist for themselves. Writing about his literary vocation towards the end of his life, Updike wrote “my only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me – to give the mundane its beautiful due.” I find Updike’s vision very noble. What is unique in Updike’s writing, however, and in much writing from the postwar period, is how little it does beyond this beautification of the mundane. Whereas a more politically-oriented writer might take the scenario in “A&P” and use it as a vehicle for the class inequalities on display—the poor cashier, his overbearing boss, the privileged teen girl who doesn’t know he exists—and ask questions of the reader or draw moral assessments, Updike’s story stands for itself. The story is experienced almost in real time, like a film. Updike keeps our attention on the object of consumption: the bare shoulders of the teenage girl. Given a different ending, I can imagine the story as a beer commercial (toss the bowtie, kiss the girl, drink Miller High Life). There are moral or spiritual or societal dimensions that could be dealt with in “A&P,” but the text is stripped clean of much beyond the beautifully rendered surface.

Midcentury writing like Updike’s would be a historical footnote had its tenets not been ingrained in writing programs nationwide. Bennett, in Workshops of Empire , describes the teaching philosophy of creative writing programs at mid-century as supporting “Sensations, not doctrines; experiences, not dogmas; memories, not philosophies.” The primacy of this type of writing, buoyed up by MFA programs, publishing houses, and (sometimes CIA-funded) magazines, was long lasting. If you have taken a writing class in the United States in the last seventy years, you have probably received lessons that have been handed down from this period: from the New Critics and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. You may, for instance, have been told that writing should “show and not tell.” In some ways, this advice is sound. To show (sensations, experiences, and memories) and not tell (doctrines, dogmas, and philosophies) in narrative fiction is a good idea. While people love to enthuse over what interests them, what readers need to know to understand what is happening usually needs to take precedence over a writer’s passions. In the decade in which I taught writing I had to steer plenty of students away from “info-dumping,” from giving a lecture about family genealogies, magical powers, or how physics works in a fantasy universe—and to structure stories around action. It’s a way to get a student to stop thinking of themselves and to start thinking about their reader.

The problem with “show don’t tell” is that applied to actual literature it becomes over-simplistic. Literature historically is full of dogmas, doctrines, and philosophies. It’s full of writers telling you things. Thomas Mann philosophizes at great length; Leo Tolstoy fills chapter after chapter with moralizing dogma; and certainly no one ever applied to Herman Melville the rule about showing and not telling regarding his whale taxonomy lists in Moby Dick .

Even on the most practical level of information delivery, showing and not telling isn’t always the best option. Consider the following passage from Pride and Prejudice , published in 1813, in which Jane Austen introduces the novel’s famous love interest:

Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.

Here telling instead of showing—giving the action in exposition, as background information— allows for a multivalenced perspective: we see how everyone at the party came to perceive Mr. Darcy. He is handsome, rich, and kind of an asshole. Darcy is filleted by the protagonist’s community before the characters meet. He doesn’t arise out of nowhere, a singular highlight upon which her imagination can run wild with metaphors. Instead of showing him walking into a room, Austen tells us what everyone in the room thinks of him after an evening of conversation. Just as we view people in real life, his character is a composite of many perceptions at the same time. 

Shown detail, which can be affecting and beautiful, has an entirely different impact and narrative purpose. In Updike’s “A&P,” the “shown” object of affection is introduced as follows:

She didn’t look around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white primadonna legs. She came down a little hard on her heels, as if she didn’t walk in bare feet that much, putting down her heels and then letting the weight move along to her toes as if she was testing the floor with every step, putting a little extra action into it. You never know for sure how girls’ minds work (do you really think it’s a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?) but you got the idea she had talked the other two into coming here with her, and now she was showing them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.

Written in first person, from the point of view of Updike’s horny teen protagonist, we linger for sentences on the girl’s footsteps. In Austen, through the told description, we become a part of the hive digestion of Darcy. In Updike, outside perspectives are dismissed (A&P shoppers are “houseslaves in pin curlers”) and the narrator, the independent soul reveling in the girl’s freedom and beauty, is—like you, the reader at home—different and special. Only he is consuming her in the right way, even if it gets him into trouble. On the level of language economy, Updike spends several sentences of a very short story writing about a girl’s footsteps. In Austen’s novel, in exactly the same number of words, a major character is introduced and physically and morally dissected by an entire community.

Austen is telling. Updike is showing. The deft handling of these tools, knowing when to use one and when the other, is the art of fiction writing. Updike also does his share of ‘telling’ in “A&P,” although the writing is stream-of-consciousness and the reading experience is more like showing than telling. Yet, how to ‘tell,’ how to give concise and witty information in exposition (à la Austen), is rarely taught in a classroom. How to ‘show,’ meanwhile, how to describe a girl walking barefoot across a supermarket, is the bread and butter of every fiction workshop in the land.

Writing teachers like to say that great writers can break the rules because they know the rules to begin with. But this idea implies that the rules have always been the same and the needs of readers have always been static. The notion that “giving the mundane its beautiful due,” describing a barefoot girl walking across supermarket tile, is the purpose of fiction, may have come as news to a writer like Jane Austen. She was as much moral philosopher and social satirist as she was crafter of fine sentences about the mundane. These static mid-century rules imply a stultifying sameness throughout the whole of world literature. Their continued adherence in academia implies that we are stuck. Just as it is hard to imagine a world after capitalism, it is hard for American fiction writers to imagine a literature after Updike and Salinger. The midcentury poetics that were institutionalized during the Cold War, at least partially for political reasons, have, I believe, brought literary fiction to a dead end.

Here in the third decade of the 21st century, according to NEA statistics, readers of literature have become steadily fewer and fewer in the last forty years. Writers’ incomes have also decreased . The transforming market, new technology, and shorter attention spans are all being blamed for the shrinking of fiction’s readership. I would further add that trends in fiction writing itself, in which stories are built upon narrower and narrower subjectivities until the only readership left is that of the writer alone, is also to blame for this exodus. These combined factors have driven literature towards contemporary obsolescence.

In the last forty years, in the same time that readership has declined, creative writing programs have blossomed. There were 52 MFA programs in 1975, whereas as of 2016 there were 350. The creative writing business makes over $200 million a year in revenue. There are more MFAs and other businesses that grew out of the Iowa workshop model, and more people willing to spend real money to go to MFA programs and attend conferences and workshops where authors, agents, and editors dole out advice on how to get that book deal. The literary world once looked to readers of (relatively inexpensive) books for its sustenance. Now, it relies upon costly creative writing education products, and hopeful writer-consumers willing to buy them.

Literature, part of our human birthright, has, like our food and water supply, our systems of care  and education, and so many other things, been ransacked and misused by capitalism. Retaking that birthright, I believe, is a small part of the struggle to build a better world. I believe that writers have a duty to use their talents, their ability to show and tell—“to give the mundane its beautiful due” and to channel broad and diverse perspectives in narrative form—to help build that better world. Not only can writers envision new worlds, they can also build schools, publishing houses, and publications that work against the capitalist ethics enthroned in the American literary establishment. They can widely broadcast stories about mass climate action, the labor movement, and left-wing solidarity. Where literary institutions during the Cold War popularized a fiction of atomized soul scouring—a flattened formalism that is still being taught in academia—new institutions can help conceptualize a post-capitalist world. Writers and artists, taking their cues from creative writing programs themselves, can build institutions. After all, institutions have created the stranglehold of liberal capitalism on the arts. Perhaps institutions, built and sustained by the left, have the chance to break that stranglehold.

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Hey everyone! I'm passionate about creative writing and want to pursue a career as an author. What colleges would you recommend for someone looking to major in English or creative writing?

I'm glad to hear that you're passionate about creative writing and interested in pursuing it in college! Here are some excellent colleges and universities that offer strong programs in English and creative writing:

1. Columbia University: Known for its School of the Arts, Columbia offers a Creative Writing major with a strong emphasis on the craft and offers courses that focus on various genres such as fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

2. New York University: NYU houses the renowned Creative Writing Program within the College of Arts and Science. This program provides a wide range of courses, including workshops in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction.

3. Brown University: Brown's Literary Arts program emphasizes creative writing workshops and allows for a great deal of flexibility in terms of course selection. They also offer a unique opportunity to work on the famous Brown Literary Review.

4. University of Iowa: Known for its prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Iowa is an excellent choice for aspiring writers. They offer both undergraduate and graduate programs in creative writing.

5. Kenyon College: With a strong focus on literature and creative writing, Kenyon College is known for its well-regarded English department and literary magazine, The Kenyon Review.

6. Emerson College: Emerson offers a Creative Writing major and is home to the acclaimed literary magazine Ploughshares. They emphasize workshop-style classes and offer unique opportunities for publishing internships.

7. Middlebury College: Middlebury provides a solid foundation in English and creative writing through their liberal arts curriculum. They also host the prestigious Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, which offers additional networking and learning opportunities.

8. Hamilton College: Hamilton's Creative Writing major includes a mix of literature courses and workshops, as well as the chance to work on their literary magazine, The Hamilton Stone Review.

9. Oberlin College: Oberlin's Creative Writing major focuses on various writing workshops and also offers the opportunity to work on the college's literary magazine, The Oberlin Review.

10. University of Virginia: UVA's English department offers a strong creative writing program with workshops, readings, and the chance to work on their literary magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review.

These colleges are just a few examples of schools with great English and creative writing programs. Keep in mind that you should also consider factors such as campus size, location, and overall fit when choosing a college. Good luck with your college search!

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International Programs

Meet Jongkwan Yun: From South Korea to Iowa, gaining real-world experience in sport management

Jongkwan Yun is a senior at the University of Iowa (UI) majoring in sport and recreation management with a concentration area in communications public relations/journalism, while minoring in news and media literacy. Yun's interest in sports began as a ski instructor at Konjiam Resort in South Korea. When he was a student in sports management at a Korean college, he had a chance to study abroad in Canada and intern at IFung Sports Management, a Canadian soccer agency . These experiences led him to transfer to Iowa to further his undergraduate studies and gain work experience.  

“I was accepted to several colleges in the U.S. when I was looking to transfer, and the two biggest reasons I chose Iowa were credit recognition and field experience classes,” reflected Yun. “I chose my concentration area and minor because there is an unofficial saying in sport management: ‘A minor is mandatory, double major is optional.’ Also, Iowa ranks high in journalism.”

"Embrace the challenge! It is okay to get hit a lot and get hurt a lot — we are students at Iowa, where we have the support and resources to help us get back up if we fall."

Internship at the Iowa Cubs

After gaining hands-on field experience from the UI Athletic Department Fans First, Yun is currently interning in the operations and promotions department of the Iowa Cubs, the Triple-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, through curricular practical training (CPT). “The help from UI International Student and Scholar Services and Professor Anna Jensen, director of Office of Field Experience in sport and recreation management, was invaluable when getting a full-time CPT,” shared Yun, who is a recipient of the 2024 UI International Student Graduation Most Unique CPT Award.  

Future career aspirations

Looking ahead, Yun aims to land a position with a major South Korean company later this year, like Hyundai or CJ CheilJedang, both of which have a sport management and marketing department. If that does not work out, he plans to use Optional Practical Training (OPT) to work for a Major League team in the U.S. before returning to South Korea to work in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO).  

Advice for international students

Yun suggested, “Take advantage of CPT and OPT opportunities. Many things can be learned through classes at school, but I think more things can be learned in the field while working.” Emphasizing his practical approach, he added, “It’s better to draw your dreams through one experience rather than through many contemplations.”

Yun’s closing message is a note of self-reflection and encouragement to fellow international students: Embrace the challenge! It is okay to get hit a lot and get hurt a lot — we are students at Iowa, where we have the support and resources to help us get back up if we fall. 

learn more about cpt and opt

International Programs  (IP) at the University of Iowa (UI) is committed to enriching the global experience of UI students, faculty, staff, and the general public by leading efforts to promote internationally oriented teaching, research, creative work, and community engagement.  IP provides support for international students and scholars, administers scholarships and assistance for students who study, intern, or do research abroad, and provides funding opportunities and grant-writing assistance for faculty engaged in international research. IP shares their stories through various media, and by hosting multiple public engagement activities each year.

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International Programs at the University of Iowa supports the right of all individuals to live freely and to live in peace. We condemn all acts of violence based on race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, and perceived national or cultural origin. In affirming its commitment to human dignity, International Programs strongly upholds the values expressed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights .  

Creative Writing Program Marks Three Decades of Growth, Diversity

By Luisa A. Igloria

2024: a milestone year which marks the 30 th  anniversary of Old Dominion University’s MFA Creative Writing Program. Its origins can be said to go back to April 1978, when the English Department’s (now Professor Emeritus, retired) Phil Raisor organized the first “Poetry Jam,” in collaboration with Pulitzer prize-winning poet W.D. Snodgrass (then a visiting poet at ODU). Raisor describes this period as “ a heady time .” Not many realize that from 1978 to 1994, ODU was also the home of AWP (the Association of Writers and Writing Programs) until it moved to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

The two-day celebration that was “Poetry Jam” has evolved into the annual ODU Literary Festival, a week-long affair at the beginning of October bringing writers of local, national, and international reputation to campus. The ODU Literary Festival is among the longest continuously running literary festivals nationwide. It has featured Rita Dove, Maxine Hong Kingston, Susan Sontag, Edward Albee, John McPhee, Tim O’Brien, Joy Harjo, Dorothy Allison, Billy Collins, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sabina Murray, Jane Hirshfield, Brian Turner, S.A. Cosby, Nicole Sealey, Franny Choi, Ross Gay, Adrian Matejka, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ilya Kaminsky, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Jose Olivarez, and Ocean Vuong, among a roster of other luminaries. MFA alumni who have gone on to publish books have also regularly been invited to read.

From an initial cohort of 12 students and three creative writing professors, ODU’s MFA Creative Writing Program has grown to anywhere between 25 to 33 talented students per year. Currently they work with a five-member core faculty (Kent Wascom, John McManus, and Jane Alberdeston in fiction; and Luisa A. Igloria and Marianne L. Chan in poetry). Award-winning writers who made up part of original teaching faculty along with Raisor (but are now also either retired or relocated) are legends in their own right—Toi Derricotte, Tony Ardizzone, Janet Peery, Scott Cairns, Sheri Reynolds, Tim Seibles, and Michael Pearson. Other faculty that ODU’s MFA Creative Writing Program was privileged to briefly have in its ranks include Molly McCully Brown and Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley.

"What we’ve also found to be consistently true is how collegial this program is — with a lively and supportive cohort, and friendships that last beyond time spent here." — Luisa A. Igloria, Louis I. Jaffe Endowed Professor & University Professor of English and Creative Writing at Old Dominion University

Our student body is diverse — from all over the country as well as from closer by. Over the last ten years, we’ve also seen an increase in the number of international students who are drawn to what our program has to offer: an exciting three-year curriculum of workshops, literature, literary publishing, and critical studies; as well as opportunities to teach in the classroom, tutor in the University’s Writing Center, coordinate the student reading series and the Writers in Community outreach program, and produce the student-led literary journal  Barely South Review . The third year gives our students more time to immerse themselves in the completion of a book-ready creative thesis. And our students’ successes have been nothing but amazing. They’ve published with some of the best (many while still in the program), won important prizes, moved into tenured academic positions, and been published in global languages. What we’ve also found to be consistently true is how collegial this program is — with a lively and supportive cohort, and friendships that last beyond time spent here.

Our themed studio workshops are now offered as hybrid/cross genre experiences. My colleagues teach workshops in horror, speculative and experimental fiction, poetry of place, poetry and the archive — these give our students so many more options for honing their skills. And we continue to explore ways to collaborate with other programs and units of the university. One of my cornerstone projects during my term as 20 th  Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth was the creation of a Virginia Poets Database, which is not only supported by the University through the Perry Library’s Digital Commons, but also by the MFA Program in the form of an assistantship for one of our students. With the awareness of ODU’s new integration with Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) and its impact on other programs, I was inspired to design and pilot a new 700-level seminar on “Writing the Body Fantastic: Exploring Metaphors of Human Corporeality.” In the fall of 2024, I look forward to a themed graduate workshop on “Writing (in) the Anthropocene,” where my students and I will explore the subject of climate precarity and how we can respond in our own work.

Even as the University and wider community go through shifts and change through time, the MFA program has grown with resilience and grace. Once, during the six years (2009-15) that I directed the MFA Program, a State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) university-wide review amended the guidelines for what kind of graduate student would be allowed to teach classes (only those who had  already  earned 18 or more graduate credits). Thus, two of our first-year MFA students at that time had to be given another assignment for their Teaching Assistantships. I thought of  AWP’s hallmarks of an effective MFA program , which lists the provision of editorial and publishing experience to its students through an affiliated magazine or press — and immediately sought department and upper administration support for creating a literary journal. This is what led to the creation of our biannual  Barely South Review  in 2009.

In 2010,  HuffPost  and  Poets & Writers  listed us among “ The Top 25 Underrated Creative Writing MFA Programs ” (better underrated than overrated, right?) — and while our MFA Creative Writing Program might be smaller than others, we do grow good writers here. When I joined the faculty in 1998, I was excited by the high caliber of both faculty and students. Twenty-five years later, I remain just as if not more excited, and look forward to all the that awaits us in our continued growth.

This essay was originally published in the Spring 2024 edition of Barely South Review , ODU’s student-led literary journal. The University’s growing MFA in Creative Writing program connects students with a seven-member creative writing faculty in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.

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2024 UNI graduate leaves her mark on campus in a unique way

Each student at the University of Northern Iowa leaves their mark on campus in one way or another, and spring 2024 graduate, Kaina Geetings embodies this tradition wholeheartedly. As the creator of the new custom UNI spirit and spirit script fonts, her  mark  can be seen from the Alumni Magazine, to the campus TC statue.

During her time at UNI, Kaina could often be found doodling, writing or drawing on her iPad, but she explored her creativity well before her time here. “I have always been just super creative, ever since I was little. And when I came to college, I kind of started exploring digital design,” she said. 

This creative side is what led Kaina to her most recent adventure, handwriting fonts that are currently in use by the University of Northern Iowa. 

“I love that I got to work on this project, it was really special. I get to leave part of who I am at UNI for them to use. I really enjoyed getting to know the team here and the office that I worked in for a while,” remarked Kaina in reference to the project. 

Sam Schmiesing, a senior graphic designer at UNI noticed Kaina and her beautiful handwriting through a request received at the marketing office.

“I had the request for a promo item come through, and it was a very cute little athletic logo pin that Kaina had designed,” said Schmiesing. “After I saw it, I thought to myself, ‘I wish I could do that, how do we get something like that over here.’”

As Schmiesing learned more about Geetings and her artwork, she also started to envision how the fonts could enhance the university's branding strategies.

The first official project for Geetings was designing hand lettering (soon to be  the font) for the cover of the 2024 Alumni Magazine. The magazine had a photo of the Campanile, adorned by lyrics to the UNI fight song handwritten by Kaina. 

Creating a typeface takes time, repetition and critique. This process spanned out over the course of nearly nine months, but after seeing the success of the magazine cover, Schmiesing knew that officially hiring Kaina to create a font for UNI was a great idea. 

Creating a font that can be used by anyone with a keyboard involves measurement, understanding of line and width, and even a little math.

“For me, it was kind of challenging figuring out how to make the individual letters because usually I just naturally go and draw something,” Kaina said. “It's very natural to me to just write, but I had to actually figure out how I wanted the font to look, and then I had to create a design for each letter individually.”

Collaborators learned a new skill through this process. “It's been a really good process and really challenging for me to kind of dissect what a word is, and then each individual letter is. I would say definitely I am more knowledgeable now in typography, things like line height and width, and just really analyzing a single letter,” said Geetings. 

Now that the fonts are in their final stages, ready to be published and used by UNI, Geetings has been reflecting over what the opportunity really brought to her. 

“I think since doing this font project now with UNI, I would love to make my own font too, for myself and my personal brand,” said Kaina. She currently uses  her creative Instagram page to highlight school projects, but she hopes to transition it to a business in the future. 

The Pella, Iowa, native graduated from UNI in 2024 with a degree in interactive digital studies and a graphic technologies minor. 

Geetings knows that the opportunity to leave her  mark on campus in this way brought her countless skills, relationships and memories. She will be seen, in the form of a font, around campus for years to come.

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