Hear Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate, renowned novelist, and Oscar award-winning screenwriter John Irving (67MFA) read from his latest novel, The Last Chairlift, during this special evening at Hancher Auditorium, which will include a chat between the author and Workshop Director Lan Samantha Chang.

Irving studied under writer Kurt Vonnegut at Iowa and served as an Iowa Writers’ Workshop instructor from 1972 to 1975. While on campus, the avid wrestler struck up a lifelong friendship with famed...

The Iowa City Book Festival presents Writers' Workshop faculty member Tracie Morris, who will share her latest poetry collection, Human/Nature. 

"Tracie Morris is the genius poet of the double-dutch: crafted, elegant, urgent, playful, fun, and musically timed. In human/nature poems, Morris dismantles gentrification, climate violence, space/history travel, ancestry, and inspires us to look at our relationship to what we call 'nature,' and what we deem 'human.' Our memories are stirred toward ice...

2023 is the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio—the first collected edition of his works, and the first publication ever of plays including Macbeth and The Tempest. Why are we still reading and performing his works all these years later? How do we situate Shakespeare’s plays in a contemporary context? Join us for a roundtable discussion on Shakespeare in the 21st century. At this conversational panel, scholars will discuss Shakespeare in the context of race, prisons, and contemporary...

The Writers' Workshop presents a Q&A with Garth Greenwell.

Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over 50 publications in nine countries, and is being...