The International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa announced on Thursday it is having to make drastic cuts, because vital grants awarded to the program by the U.S. State Department are “being terminated.” The State Department had supported IWP since it was founded 58 years ago, because of the connections the program creates with influential cultural figures in other countries.
Since 1967, IWP has brought more than 1,600 writers from around the world to Iowa City. Almost all have either had, or gone on to have, prominent careers in their own countries. Three have later won the Nobel Prize for Literature: Orhan Pamuk, Mo Yan and most recently, Han Kang, who was awarded the Nobel last year.
IWP’s impact on culture and its role in what’s called “soft power diplomacy” — the improvement of international relations through cultural and artistic exchanges — were recognized early on, and nine years after the program began, co-founders Paul and Hualing Engle were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The State Department’s decision to suddenly end almost six decades of support for the internationally respected program is just the most recent example of the Trump administration’s draconian and chaotic slashing of government agencies and the support provided by those agencies provided to important programs in the country and around the world.
In its news release on Thursday, IWP said it learned of the decision in a Feb. 26 letter from the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
“This notification explained that the IWP’s awards ‘no longer effectuate agency priorities,’ nor align ‘with agency priorities and national interest’,” IWP said.
“We are devastated by the abrupt end of this 58-year partnership and are working closely with the Office of General Counsel and the university’s grant accounting office to review the terminations, understand their full impact, and respond in the best interest of the organization,” IWP Director Christoper Merrill said in a statement. “Despite this disappointing turn of events, the IWP’s mission remains the same and, with the help of a small number of other partners, we will still hold a 2025 fall residency as we also pursue new sources of funding.”
Merrill said UI remains committed to the IWP and its mission “to promote mutual understanding through creative writing and literature.”
Speaking to Little Village on Thursday morning, Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature Executive Director John Kenyon said he felt “profound disappointment” when he saw IWP’s announcement.
“It’s a tremendously important program,” Kenyon said. “I travel around the world quite a bit and talk to people who are in the literary world. People know about Iowa and Iowa City and the University of Iowa. Some of that is because of the Writers’ Workshop — Marilynne Robinson, Kurt Vonnegut, Flannery O’Connor and all of that. But of a lot that is because people know someone who spent time here and fell in love with this place, and went home and wrote about it.”
“There are so many books by writers around the world that mention Iowa, and if you didn’t know about the International Writing Program, you might wonder why all these people are writing about Iowa.”
“That’s priceless,” he said, referring to the international ties the program has created for both Iowa and the United States. It also created ties between the international authors who participated in IWP’s programs, enabling exchanges and lasting partnerships between significant artists who otherwise would never have met, Kenyon pointed out.
“For whatever amount of money the State Department was putting into this, the return on that investment is staggering,” he said.
The total amount of the federal funding the Trump administration canceled comes to almost $1 million, according to the UI. Although the Fall Residency program will continue, this year’s cohort of writers will be much smaller, probably half the usual 30 participants.
The residency runs from late August to mid-November, and hosts poets, playwrights, fiction and nonfiction writers from around the world. Participating writers are typically still in the early stages of their careers, but have published at least one work and have enough English proficiency to navigate their way around Iowa.
“The Residency provides writers with time, in a setting congenial to their efforts, for the production of literary work,” IWP’s site explains. “It also introduces them to the social and cultural fabrics of the United States, enables them to take part in American university life, and creates opportunities for them to contribute to literature courses both at the University of Iowa and across the country.”
The Fall Residency will survive the State Department cuts, albeit in a reduced capacity, because of gifts and grants from other sources, including “foreign ministries of culture and nongovernmental organizations.” Other IWP programs lack that extra support.
“The immediate result” of the grant cuts “was the cancellation of Between the Lines (the IWP’s summer youth program), and the dissolution of Lines and Spaces Exchanges, Distance Learning courses, and Emerging Voices programs,” IWP said.
Between the Lines was launched in 2008, and was “a two-week creative writing and cultural exchange program for students aged 15-18.”
“Every summer, participants from all over the world come together in Iowa City to live as a community in university dorms, broaden their literary horizons, and deepen their empathy and their understanding of one another’s cultures,” according to the program’s site.
The year’s Between the Lines had been scheduled for July, and was prepared to host 16 international students and ten students from around the U.S. It’s theme was “Peace and the Writing Experience.”
Lines & Spaces Exchanges organized “cultural exchanges in countries or regions with a relatively sparse history of literary liaisons with the contemporary United States.” The exchanges involved “public readings, visits to universities and literary institutions, encounters with cultural personalities and media.” The program, which was a partnership between IWP and the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs was designed to “increase our understanding of the historical and current affairs” of the regions that have limited contact with the U.S.
Emerging Voices was another collaboration between IWP and the State Department that launched last year. It was a “six-month creative writing mentorship program” that matched “emerging writers who are displaced, sheltering in place, and/or facing limited educational opportunities with IWP alums for creative writing and professionalization instruction.”
“The IWP sought partnership support and welcomed emerging writer nominations and applications from U.S. Embassies in the countries of Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Myanmar, and Ukraine,” the Emerging Voices’ page explained. “In total, this program support[ed] 35 mentees,” during its first, and now only, year.
At the close of its announcement on Thursday, IWP said its “mission to promote mutual understanding through creative writing and literature remains unchanged,” and provided a link for anyone who wants to make a donation “to support the IWP as we begin to rebuild.”
