About Our Coaches

Mahealani Deenik is a poetry student at the Workshop. She graduated from NYU with a media studies degree and minored in creative writing. She was born and raised in Hawaiʻi. She is interested in all forms of writing and has the most experience working within poetry and fiction genres.

Sydney Kim is a second-year fiction candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Though she is happy to work with any genre, she is most familiar with fiction or creative nonfiction. She loves to read both realist and speculative works, especially those that are invested in character, or which explore themes of love, romance, the self, and the absurdity of everyday life. She has a dog named Opal.

Robyn Luk is a poet and MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Prior to Iowa, she received a B.A. in religion and English from Syracuse University. She reads everything, and is especially fond of poetry, academic writing for the humanities, and fiction that engages with questions and themes of religion, dynamics in societies, and human nature. 

Maxwell Zupke is a second-year MFA candidate in the Iowa Writers' Workshop from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He's happy to help with any writing project and is particularly interested in literary fiction and drama.