For more than 80 years writers have come to Iowa City to work on their manuscripts and to exchange ideas about writing and reading with each other and with the faculty. Many of them have gone on to publish award-winning work after graduating. With the spirit of an arts colony and the benefits of the research University of which we are a part, the Writers' Workshop continues to foster and to celebrate American literature in all its varied forms.

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Write Now Contest | Hawkeye Haiku

Monday, November 4 9:00am to Friday, November 15, 2024 4:00pm
How do you define “family?” Is it a group of individuals who live under one roof, or a select number of individuals who are there for you no matter the circumstances? See details and submit: https://www.foriowa.org/write-now/hawkeye-haiku/ Use your own definition of this word as you channel your creativity in our annual Write Now: UI Alumni and Friends Hawkeye Haiku Contest. You have from Nov. 4–15, 2024, to send us a haiku that explores a “family” theme in a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. The age...
Mary Engle Burge promotional image

Mary Engle Burge

Tuesday, November 12, 2024 6:00pm
Coralville Public Library
Visit Coralville Public Library for an evening with Mary Engle Burge as she shares her childhood experiences as a close observer of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the 1940s and ’50s. Mary’s rich stories stem from her interactions with the six writers who lived with the Engles, as well as many others who visited for shorter stints. After school, she spent countless afternoons at the Iowa Writers Workshop quonset hut, keenly observing her father and forming vivid memories of the community. The...
Live from Prairie Lights | Shane Book & Mark Levine promotional image

Live from Prairie Lights | Shane Book & Mark Levine

Wednesday, November 13, 2024 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
Poets Shane Book and Mark Levine will read from their work. Shane Book will read from All Black Everything (Kuhl House Poets, 2023). Mark Levine will read from Sound Fury (Univ. of Iowa Press). “All Black Everything proposes an expansive, global poetics, which is equally a poetics of Black diasporan fluency. All Black’s poems ride the crosscurrents of history and popular culture through African America, the Caribbean, West Africa, the United Kingdom, and Canada. As references whirl and...
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