History

1897-1936

The first creative writing class at the University of Iowa ("Verse-making") was offered in the spring semester of 1897. In 1922, Carl Seashore, dean of the Graduate College, introduced a new model for the academic study of the arts when he announced that the University of Iowa would accept creative work as theses for advanced degrees. 

The School of Letters began to offer regular courses in writing in which selected students were tutored by resident and visiting writers.

The Workshop was formally founded in 1936, with the gathering together of poets and fiction writers under the guidance of founding director Wilbur Schramm. "It seemed like an idea," said Schramm, "whose time had come."

From the outset, the program enjoyed a series of distinguished visitors, among them Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren, John Berryman, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Lowell. The early successes of some of the program's first graduates helped the program to gain renown.

1936-1965

One of the first students to receive an M.A. in creative writing was the poet Paul Engle, who assumed the directorship of the Workshop in 1941. During the 24 years of his directorship, from 1945 to 1965, the Workshop gained a national reputation as the premier program of its kind. During World War II enrollment was no more than a dozen students, but, after the war, it grew to over a hundred students and divided into the fiction and poetry areas of focus that exist today.

In 1962, Engle and his wife, Hualing Nieh Engle, started the country's first translation workshop. In 1967, the couple founded the International Writing Program. In 1976, they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their work facilitating creative and cultural exchange through the International Writing Program.

1965-2005

The Workshop's prominence continued through the directorships of George Starbuck (1966-1969), John Leggett (1970-1987), and Frank Conroy (1987-2005). 

 During this time, thousands of writers of great promise and talent graduated from the program, including Jane Smiley, Juan Felipe Herrera, James Alan McPherson, John Irving, Rita Dove, Denis Johnson, Jorie Graham, Yiyun Li, Justin Torres, and Lan Samantha Chang, who eventually took over the directorship.

For decades, Workshop classes were held in temporary, quonset-style army barracks near the Iowa River, where the Iowa Memorial Union stands today. In 1966, the program moved to the English-Philosophy Building, and moved yet again in 1997 to its current administrative home, the Dey House, an historic, Victorian-era home adapted for reuse as an academic building.

2005-Present

Lan Samantha Chang assumed the directorship in 2006. During her time as director, the program has continued to thrive and its writers to receive some of the industry's biggest awards. In addition to steering the program, Chang has worked to raise funds and increase student support. Today, the program offers equal funding to all students. The increase in student support has gone hand-in-hand with a marked increase in the diversity of the students in the program, maintaining the Workshop's place as a vital space for writers.

In 2006, the program's home grew, with the newly-built addition to the Dey House, the Glenn Schaeffer Library and Archives. The new building features a collection of faculty and alumni books as well as an events space, classrooms, and faculty offices.