Writers' Workshop | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | The University of Iowa

The Iowa Writers' Workshop

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.

About the Writers' Workshop

How to Apply

Program News

Iowa Writers Revisit Their Origin Stories in Sad Me of the Past Podcast

Friday, October 17, 2025

Megan Magee

Iowa Magazine

Andrea Brady receives 2025 Truman Capote Award

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

4 Iowa alums longlisted for National Book Award

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Office of Strategic Communication

Iowa Writers’ Workshop student, alumna receive grants from James Patterson to finish books

Thursday, September 11, 2025

Office of Strategic Communication

All Program News

Upcoming Events

Live from Prairie Lights | Jen Percy in conversation with Kerry Howley — 'Girls Play Dead'

Monday, November 17, 2025 7:00pm

Prairie Lights Books

Writers' Workshop and Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program graduate Jen Percy will read from her newest book, Girls Play Dead, and will be joined in conversation with former Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program professor Kerry Howley. Girls Play Dead is described as "a landmark exploration of one of the most consequential and pervasive issues of our time — sexual violence ... blending investigative reportage and memoir to explore the misunderstood ways women survive and forever carry trauma ... Since her...

Attacca Quartet at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 1:00pm

Dey House

Attacca Quartet is engaged in a week-long residency at the University of Iowa alongside UI 2025–2026 Composer-in-Residence, Gabriel Kahane.

Live from Prairie Lights | Othuke Umukoro in conv with Reyumeh Ejue - 'Fenestration'

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 7:00pm

Prairie Lights Books

Othuke Umukoro will read from his debut poetry collection, Fenestration, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Diane Seuss as the winner of the 2024 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, and will be in conversation with Writers' Workshop graduate Reyumeh Ejue. Tracie Morris says of Fenestration, “Othuke’s heart-centric new work...is filled with tender poems of discovery. They stay with the reader long after the end of a page, and the book. The strength of these poems is in the refined delicacy of...

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