Iowa Writer's Workshop

A The Dey House.
Dey House at the Writers' Workshop

The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, is a famous graduate-level creative writing program in the United States. Its official name is the Program in Creative Writing.[1]

Students can earn a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Creative Writing. This lets them teach Creative Writing at other colleges and universities. Because the program is also a workshop, students talk about their writing with each other and their teachers.[2]

It is the oldest MFA writing program in America. It was started in 1936. Many successful writers have studied in this program. Some of its earliest teachers and visiting writers were Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren, John Berryman, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Lowell.[3]

Many teachers and students from the program have won Pulitzer Prizes in Fiction and Poetry.[4] Some of them are:

  • John Berryman; 1965, 77 Dream Songs
  • John Cheever: 1979,The Stories of John Cheever
  • Rita Dove: 1987, Thomas and Beulah
  • Louise Glück: 1993, The Dream of the Unified Field
  • Donald R. Justice: 1980, Selected Poems
  • Carolyn Kizer: 1985, Yin
  • Philip Levine: 1995, The Simple Truth
  • Robert Lowell: 1947, Lord Weary's Castle; 1974, The Dolphin
  • James Alan McPherson: 1978, Elbow Room
  • Marilynne Robinson: 2005, Gilead
  • Philip Roth: 1998. American Pastoral
  • W.D. Snodgrass: 1960, Heart's Needle
  • Mark Strand: 1999, Blizzard of One
  • James Tate: 1992, Selected Poems
  • Mona Van Duyn: 1991, Near Changes
  • Charles Wright: 1998, Black Zodiac
  • Michael Cunningham 1999 The Hours
  • Mark Strand 1999 Blizzard of One
  • Nilo Cruz 2003 Anna in the Tropics   
  • Marilynne Robinson 2005 Gilead 
  • Robert Hass 2008 Time and Materials   
  • Philip Schultz 2008 Failure
  • David Lang 2008 The Little Match Girl Passion  
  • Paul Harding 2010 Tinkers        
  • Andrew Sean Greer 2018 Less   
  • Forrest Gander 2019 Be With 
  • Jayne Anne Phillips 2024 Night Watch[5]          
  • Robert Penn Warren: 1947, All the King's Men; 1958, Promises: Poems 1954-1956; 1979, Now and Then

References

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  1. ↑ "About the Workshop | Iowa Writers' Workshop | College of Liberal Arts & Sciences | The University of Iowa". writersworkshop.uiowa.edu. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  2. ↑ "Philosophy | Iowa Writers' Workshop | College of Liberal Arts & Sciences | The University of Iowa". writersworkshop.uiowa.edu. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  3. ↑ "History | Iowa Writers' Workshop | College of Liberal Arts & Sciences | The University of Iowa". writersworkshop.uiowa.edu. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  4. ↑ "Pulitzer Prize Winners with UI Affiliations - After Graduation—Iowa Outcomes - Undergraduate Admissions - The University of Iowa". web.archive.org. 2005-07-27. Archived from the original on 2005-07-27. Retrieved 2023-02-04.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  5. ↑ "Pulitzer Prize Winners | The Writing University - The University of Iowa". writinguniversity.org. Retrieved 2024-05-13.