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

Events

Spring faculty reading: Tom Drury  promotional image

Spring faculty reading: Tom Drury

Saturday, April 19, 2025 8:00pm
Glenn Schaeffer Library
Visiting Professor of Fiction, Tom Drury will read in the Frank Conroy Reading Room in Glenn Schaeffer Library.Tom Drury is from the American Midwest. As a teenager he walked beans and worked at a grain elevator, though he doubts that people walk beans anymore, and the grain elevator is gone, as are the railroad tracks that brought the boxcars to the grain elevator.He's written five novels, and his writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, A Public Space, Ploughshares, Granta, Th...
Live from Prairie Lights | Paul Lisicky in conversation with Garth Greenwell - 'Song So Wild and Blue' promotional image

Live from Prairie Lights | Paul Lisicky in conversation with Garth Greenwell - 'Song So Wild and Blue'

Monday, April 21, 2025 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
Brooklyn-based writer and Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Paul Lisicky will read from his newest book, Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell. He will be joined in conversation with fellow Writers' Workshop alum and current Iowa City resident, Garth Greenwell. Named a Most Anticipated Book of Spring 2025 by Kirkus Reviews, LitHub, and Electric Lit, Song So Wild and Blue is a "guide to life that is part memoir, part biography [of Joni Mitchell], and part homage," and it's "a...
Remembering the Life of Connie Brothers promotional image

Remembering the Life of Connie Brothers

Wednesday, April 23, 2025 4:30pm
Prairie Lights Books
Please join us at 4:30 p.m. to commemorate the life of Connie Brothers, Program Associate of the Writers' Workshop from 1974-2019 and friend of Prairie Lights bookstore.Speakers will include: Maggie Conroy, David Hamilton, Rachel McPherson, Jan Weissmiller, Pam Willard and Kevin Zou.To subscribe to a weekly emailing list of Writers' Workshop events, please fill in the linked form or email iww@uiowa.edu with “Events Mailing List Subscribe” in the subject line.