Chris Offutt lives on a hill outside Iowa City. His driveway looks like it will be impossible to shovel during the winter, but it is otherwise a nice home, calm, the kind of place you would imagine a writer would live. There’s a 10-foot cactus that a student gave him. It fills the entire living room window. There are turtle shells on a shelf, and a huge hornet nest hanging in his office. At his dining room table sat a notebook and a draft of his next project.
Iowa Writers Workshop
Posted inCommunity/News
UI announces end to Iowa Summer Writing Festival, Iowa Youth Writing Project
Months after the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program was forced to make drastic cuts following the loss of its federal funding, two other writing programs on the UI campus are coming to an end. The UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) announced Monday the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and the Iowa Youth […]
Posted inCommunity/News
University of Iowa to form new Office of Writing and Communication
The University of Iowa is working to bind its writing centers, programs and initiatives closer together with a new office. The UI announced online Thursday its launch of the Office of Writing and Communication, which will serve as a “strategic hub” and support system for the university’s writing programs. Executive Vice President and Provost Kevin […]
Posted inEastern Iowa
‘At Halloween, I’m at the height of my powers’: An interview with writer Carmen Maria Machado, currently teaching ‘the art of haunting’ at UI
Celebrated experimental writer Carmen Maria Machado is back in Iowa City this fall. The Allentown, Pennsylvania native earned her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2018, and is back as a visiting associate professor in the Workshop teaching a very October-friendly graduate course, “The Art of Haunting.” Machado has written three books, including the […]
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University of Iowa Translation Workshop celebrates 60 years of supporting the art and labor of translation
The Masters of Fine Arts in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa is one of only a handful of similar programs worldwide. A key facet, the 60-year-old UI Translation Workshop, predates the MFA program by a decade. Boasting the title of “the country’s first translation workshop in a university setting,” it took shape during […]
Posted inEastern Iowa Arts & Entertainment
Hancher to debut Infinite Dream Festival this fall — two weeks of music, conversation and a spaced-out art installation
Infinite Dream Festival, a new two-week, multidisciplinary festival will debut in Iowa City this October, organizers announced Wednesday. The festival is a collaborative effort between the University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium and the Office of Performing Arts and Engagement. Infinite Dream will include orchestral, jazz and alternative music; a conversation with Iowa Writers’ Workshop alums […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘Bang Bang Crash’ by Nic Brown
Once a drummer, always a drummer? When Nic Brown landed a fellowship to enter the very selective Iowa Writers’ Workshop (where he earned his MFA in 2006), he figured his drumming days were done. He didn’t want to reference his years on the rock circuit with his new friends in Iowa City. At parties, the […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Watch: Screenwriter and producer David Kajganich on adapting novels, cannibalism and Iowa City’s new film festival
For the first time in four years, screenwriter and Iowa Writers’ Workshop alum David Kajganich is back in Iowa City for the FilmScene premiere of his genre-bending, spine-tingling new work. Bones and All is the third adapted screenplay Kajganich has crafted for director Luca Guadagnino — audiences packed FilmScene during the 2018 Witching Hour Festival […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘The Machine Stops’ blends opera, sci-fi and rock to showcase Iowa talent, explore a tech dystopia
Not everyone sits at home dreaming of attending an opera. But it might just be time to start. The Machine Opera Company is bringing an exciting new modern opera to the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts. The Machine Stops will be staged for just two performances later this month. Librettist Cecile Goding has always […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Jane Smiley’s Iowa-set classic ‘A Thousand Acres’ is adapted to the stage for Des Moines Metro Opera’s 50th
When an arts organization celebrates 50 years of sharing wonderful work with enraptured audiences, the time is right to do something exceptional. The question, of course, is what that something should be. For the Des Moines Metro Opera, the answer in part turned out to be adapting Iowa Writers’ Workshop alum Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer Prize […]
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T.C. Boyle discusses and reads from his work; his writings have never been timelier
T.C. Boyle returns to Iowa City this week for a pair of events presented by the University of Iowa Center for Advancement and the UI Lecture Committee. First, tonight, May 4, those orgs join with FilmScene for a screening of The Road to Wellville, the 1994 film based on Boyle’s 1993 novel of the same […]
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Marvin Bell, UI professor and first Iowa Poet Laureate, has died
Marvin Bell, first Poet Laureate of Iowa, longtime Iowa Writers’ Workshop professor and first poetry editor of The Iowa Review, died on Monday, Dec. 14 after a months-long illness. He was 83. Bell earned his MFA from the Writers’ Workshop prior to his 40-year tenure teaching there. His students included such luminaries as James Galvin, […]
