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.

Upcoming Events

Iowa City Book Festival & Geneva Lecture Series | Marilynne Robinson and Nicholas Kristof promotional image

Iowa City Book Festival & Geneva Lecture Series | Marilynne Robinson and Nicholas Kristof

Monday, October 19, 2026 7:00pm
Macbride Hall

The following is copied from https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/marilynne-robinson-and-nicholas-kristof/:

How Can We Hope When It All Feels Hopeless? An evening with Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson is the author of the novels Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, Lila, and Jack. Gilead won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, while Home received the Orange Prize for Fiction and Lila won the National Book Critics...

Iowa City Book Festival | Mark Leidner - 'Elegy for Pangaea' promotional image

Iowa City Book Festival | Mark Leidner - 'Elegy for Pangaea'

Wednesday, October 21, 2026 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
Mark Leidner’s third poetry collection, 'Elegy for Pangaea', is as funny, strange, and epic as his two previous collections
Literary Legends Featuring Pulitzer Prize Winner Yiyun Li (00MS, 05MFA) promotional image

Literary Legends Featuring Pulitzer Prize Winner Yiyun Li (00MS, 05MFA)

Friday, October 23, 2026 7:30pm
The University of Iowa - The Levitt Center for University Advancement
2026 Literary Legends Featuring Pulitzer Prize winner Yiyun Li (00MS, 05MFA)

Program News

A portrait of University of Iowa aluman Yiyun Li.

Pulitzer Prize winner Yiyun Li headlines Iowa’s Literary Legends Talk

Thursday, October 15, 2026
The Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate returns to campus Oct. 23 to discuss her acclaimed memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow.
A collage of books written by University of Iowa alumni.

Bookshelf picks: New releases from University of Iowa authors

Thursday, October 15, 2026
Check out the latest must-read titles from the Writing University.
A portrait of Nicholas Boggs, who received the Truman Capote Literary Trust Award administered by the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop.

Nicholas Boggs receives 2026 Truman Capote Award from Writers' Workshop

Thursday, October 8, 2026
Nicholas Boggs, a writer and assistant professor of English and creative writing at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, has been selected as the 2026 recipient of the Truman Capote Literary Trust Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin.