Write stuff: The workshop that shapes American literature

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, on its 75th anniversary, offers a window into the state of American letters.

IOWA CITY, IOWA — For Sena Jeter, it was a photo – one of a poet running a program at the University of Iowa called The Writers’ Workshop.

The caption told her this workshop did something incredible: grant graduate degrees for writing poems and stories.

She sent in a story, got accepted, and took the train north from Alabama, knowing she would need a job to support herself. Read more

Published in the The Christian Science Monitor, June 25, 2011.

Richard Yates, In Memoriam

Posted to the Richard Yates archive. This essay appeared in The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (Hyperion, 1999).

It was 1967, an hour before class, and Dick Yates was sitting in an Iowa City bar called the Airliner, in a total, cold-sweat panic. One of his best students –someone with not only a big reputation but a book contract–had a chapter up for discussion; most of us liked it but Dick thought it was lousy and had just realized there was no graceful way out. He would have to say so in class. Read more