In 1897, theater producer George Cram Cook began teaching a class called "Verse-Making", effectively the University of Iowa's first creative writing class.[6] In 1922, Dean Carl Seashore of the University of Iowa Graduate College allowed creative writing to be accepted as theses for advanced degrees. Later, the School of Letters began selecting students for writing courses in which they were tutored by resident and visiting writers. The Iowa Writers' Workshop began as an official program in 1936, with Wilbur Schramm as its first director.[7]
Under Paul Engle, its second director from 1941 to 1965, the program became a national landmark and was divided into fiction and poetry. He partnered with Esquire for a 1959 symposium titled "The Writer in Mass Culture" that included as guests Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, and Mark Harris, and was covered in Newsweek. In 1962, Engle and his wife, Hualing Nieh Engle, started the country's first translation workshop, which led to the creation of the university's MFA program in literary translation. In 1967, the couple founded the International Writing Program,[6] and in 1976, they were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their work facilitating creative and cultural exchange through the International Writing Program. A reported over 300 writers supported them for the honor, which the Nobel Committee eventually did not give that year.[8]
Subsequent directors were George Starbuck (1965–69),[10]John Leggett (1969–86),[11] and Frank Conroy (1987–2005), whose 19 years at the helm made him the longest-serving director.
Lan Samantha Chang was appointed the Workshop's sixth director in 2006.[10] She is the program's first female, first Asian American, and first nonwhite director, and has held the role for 17 years.
The Writers' Workshop originated in temporary military barracks-style buildings near the Iowa River, the present location of the Iowa Memorial Union, but in 1966 moved to the English-Philosophy Building. In 1997, it moved to its current location, Dey House. The Glenn Schaeffer Library and Archives, an extension including a library and reading room, classrooms, and faculty offices, was added to Dey House in 2006.[6]
The Workshop was formed by Norman Foerster's passionate support for creative writing and Wilbur Schramm's conviction that writing should be as technical and rigorous a pursuit as any traditional literature degree. The workshop model for higher education creative writing was created in that pursuit of technical intensity. The model constantly exposed students to outside opinions on their fiction and created a pressurized atmosphere that forced students to rein in their emotional reactions and consider their work analytically. The Workshop operated without the characteristic assumption of the time that artists needed to be unleashed, instead opting to focus and refine them.[12] While intended to serve fiction writers, the Workshop began to change in the 1970s when its first nonfiction thesis was accepted. Ever since, the Workshop has produced many literary journalists and shaped public perception of creative nonfiction.[13]
The program's curriculum requires students to take a small number of classes each semester, including the Graduate Fiction Workshop or Graduate Poetry Workshop and one or two additional literature seminars. These requirements are meant to prepare students for the realities of professional writing, where self-discipline is paramount. The graduate workshop courses meet weekly. Before each three-hour class, a small number of students submit material for critical reading by their peers. The class consists of a round-table discussion during which the students and the instructor discuss each piece. How classes are conducted varies by teacher and between poetry and fiction. The ideal result is not only that writers come away with insights into their work's strengths and weaknesses, but that the class as a whole derives insight, whether general or specific, about the process of writing.[14]
When the Workshop received the National Humanities Medal in 2002, then director Conroy explained its ethos: "It is a focused program, like Juilliard. We read constantly, rereading the classics. They can write anything they want. We teach them what we've learned as writers."[15]
In a 2022 interview, Chang said:
We don't have a quota about where people are from or what kind of writing they do. What we look for is work that is filled with energy, work that interests us. I'm sure, every year, there are many, many very good writers who go elsewhere because we don't admit them. But we try to be very open. I would say that we look for work that excites us. Frank Conroy used to describe it as feeling someone reaching off the page at you when you're reading, feeling tension in the language.[16]
In 1986, during the 50th anniversary of the Workshop, The New York Times wrote: "At 50, the Iowa workshop is something of a dowager, standing unshakably in the mainstream of our literary life."[14]
In 2019, five graduates won Guggenheim Fellowships.[18] In April 2021, the American Academy of Arts and Letters recognized seven graduates and former faculty: five graduates and a former visiting faculty member received awards, and an alumna was elected to membership. In response to the news, Chang said:
The graduates being distinguished by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021 came to the Iowa Writers' Workshop over a period of more than four decades. This reflects the strength and longevity of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and creative writing at Iowa.[19]
^Bennett, Eric (February 10, 2014). "How Iowa Flattened Literature". MFA vs. NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction. Faber and Faber and n+1. Retrieved April 2, 2014.
^Dowling, David (2016). "Beyond the Program Era: Tracy Kidder, John D'Agata, and the Rise of Literary Journalism at the Iowa Writers' Workshop". Literary Journalism Studies. 8 (1): 52–56 – via EBSCO Communication Source.
