Join the long, rich, historical tradition of artists creating in our spaces.

Professional, aspiring, and amateur artists alike, make our museum your muse. The return of this popular program series welcomes guests into the Museum of Natural History's magical gallery spaces after-hours to work on sketching or writing projects with other campus and community artists.

Tell a friend, grab a notebook, and join us on the first Friday of each month. We'll provide a new inspo prompt for each session and...

Kevin Moffett will read from his longlisted National Book Award debut novel, Only Son, and will be joined in conversation with Matthew Vollmer. Starting in early 1980s Florida with a 9-year-old boy who loses his father and traveling through time 25 years later to witness the boy as a man with a son of his own (and lingering questions about the father he barely knew), Only Son is, according to NPR, "[A] suburban Buddha of a book, […] composed of a series of short vignettes that are so simple...

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop is back for the Fall Semester!

Join us monthly to generate new creative writing inspired by works in the Stanley collection. Each session will be led by a different talented writer from our area, who will be offering a new prompt and a new approach to ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by visual art). Bring your own notebook and pencil or computer and leave with the beginning of a newly written piece.

Co-sponsored by Iowa City Poetry. Teen and...

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...