Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Dear Writer About Us

Contents Our Staff

Welcome 1 Amy Margolis, Director, has been with the Festival since 1990, as a graduate The Workshop 2 assistant, a program assistant, an assistant director, a 2 The Workshop co-director and, since 2001, as the program’s director. Method Amy received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ 2 Skill Levels/Choosing Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow. a Workshop She’s taught fiction and nonfiction writing as part of 3 Workshops by Date the Festival and to undergraduates at The University of 7 Workshops by Iowa. Her short fiction appears in The Iowa Review and Instructor was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She recently collaborated The Festival with writer and violinist Tricia Park, along with the Experience 68 68 The Eleventh Hour Solera Quartet and writers Robin Hemley, Daniel 68 Summer in Iowa City Khalastchi, and Sabrina Orah Mark, on “Mendelssohn 68 Getting Here as Muse,” a performance piece of music and original 69 Your Day, Weekend, writing inspired by the work of Felix Mendelssohn. She Week: Schedules is currently at work on a memoir-in-shards about her 70 Where to Stay life as a dancer in the late seventies, at the onset of the AIDS crisis. Registration Information 72 72 How to Register 72 Fees and Deadlines: Kate Aspengren, Weeklong & Weekend Workshops Weekend Coordinator, 73 Fees, Deadlines, and oversees the weekend sessions for the Festival and Timeline: Two-Week is a long-time faculty member in the program. She Intensive Workshop encourages you to read about her educational and 73 Cancellation & teaching background on the page with her workshop Transfer Policies description. She has written about flight, cowgirls, whales, and apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Kate irons Registration Form 74 everything she wears. Really.

Cover illustration by Skye McNeill Art & Design: https:// skyemcneillcreative.com/

Photos by Lola Flash, Tom Langdon, Marian Roth, Lisa Wells

Design by Benson & Hepker Design, Iowa City Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Dear Writer About Us

Dear Writer,

Here in Iowa City, we are preparing for the 32nd Iowa Summer Writing Festival. In these pages, you’ll find workshops in the novel, the short story, the essay, the memoir; in writing the weird, writing the body, writing about nowhere, writing the emergency, flash fiction, short poems, political poems, poems of memory, picture books, hybrid forms, reflective writing, travel writing, playwriting, and more. We’re breathless with excitement for our 32nd Festival, which features 117 workshops that explore the genres in their reaches.

Since 1987, the Festival has welcomed to the campus of The University of Iowa writers from 18 to 97 years of age, from all 50 states, and from every continent. Most of us come to the workshop table from other areas of expertise, other lives. These include the armed forces, business, diplomacy, education, farming, homemaking, journalism, law, law enforcement, medicine, parenting, pastoral care, the performing arts, social services, and more. We come together across the genres, the generations, and at every level of literary practice in a common enterprise. We come as writers. This is the only assumption we make about you, whether you arrive with the third draft of your novel, a message in a bottle, or merely a bee in your bonnet.

The Festival is proud to belong to Iowa City—a UNESCO City of Literature in the Creative Cities Network. Iowa City has long been a haven for writers, and The University of Iowa our ancestral home. The rich literary legacy that belongs to this place abides today in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Nonfiction Writing Program, the Playwrights Workshop, the International Writing Program, the Spanish Creative Writing Program, the Translation Workshop, the undergraduate Major in English and Creative Writing, The Certificate in Writing, the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, The Iowa Youth Writing Project, Between the Lines: The Writing Experience, the Irish Writing Program, the Iowa Center for the Book, The University of Iowa Press, The Iowa Review, and The Examined Life Journal. Some years ago, Iowa City dedicated the Iowa Avenue Literary Walk, which celebrates in bronze relief panels some of the singular voices that have come together here, from Flannery O’Connor and Kurt Vonnegut to John Irving and James Tate. Everything here is closely observed—now, even the sidewalks.

The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is an opportunity for you to share your work in a community that wishes it well. It’s a long conversation we’ve been having in Iowa City.

We invite you to pull up a chair.

Amy Margolis Director

1 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Method Skill Levels Workshops by Date

The Workshop Method

Courses in the Iowa Summer Writing Festival are primarily based on the workshop method. Although your workshop leader may include some study of published material, in most cases the main text is your own creative work. Some workshops are devoted to critiquing work you’ve brought from home, some to generating new work through guided exercises and assignments, and some incorporate a combination of both approaches. Please read the descriptions carefully.

The workshop is a dynamic community that reads, and responds to, what’s brought to it. We approach each work-in-progress on its own terms, in a spirit of critical appreciation for that work’s own intentions. We’re on its side. In workshops devoted to critiquing work, your writing will be read and discussed by your fellow writers, giving you the benefit of a careful, supportive readership. You are expected to give the same considered feedback to others on their work.

Skill Levels/Choosing a Workshop

Most workshops in the Festival are designed to be appropriate for writers across a range of skill levels and literary practice. They vary, though, in terms of locus in the writing process. When choosing a workshop, resist the temptation to place yourself as a writer. Rather, place the work you want to focus on in your time here.

If you’re dealing with issues that arise in later drafts, you might look at workshops that explore aspects of revision or structure, or workshops with an emphasis on providing feedback on pages participants bring from home. If you’re starting a new project, or your project has stalled out, or you’re returning to the page after a long silence, or you’re crossing genres, a course that is devoted to generating new work through guided exercises and assignments (with perhaps light discussion of the new writing you generate) could give you a jumpstart.

If you find choosing among so many workshops dizzying, you might ask yourself:

“What do I want to accomplish in my week/weekend in Iowa City? What do I want to carry home and into my writing next year?”

Your answer is the most accurate map to the workshop that’s best for you. If you get lost in the weeds, call the Festival office at 319-335-4160, and we’ll help you clear a path. You will help us guide you by studying the descriptions and narrowing your selections before we speak.

2 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Method Skill Levels Workshops by Date

Workshops by Date

Weekend Workshops June 16–17 Mary Allen...... Travel Writing Made Easy, and It’s All Travel Writing ...... 9 Venise Berry...... Muddy Water: Controlling Plot, Subplots, and Plot Points in Your Novel ...... 14 Jonathan Blum...... Creating Compelling Characters in Fiction ...... 15 Amy Butcher...... The Literary Memoir ...... 17 Thomas K . Dean...... Revising Sentences for Impact ...... 20 Daniel Khalastchi...... Betting on the Muse: A Poetry Workshop ...... 38 Sabrina Orah Mark...... Obsession: A Poetry Workshop ...... 39 Marc Nieson ...... The Art of Metaphor ...... 47 Lon Otto ...... Writing in Layers: Fiction, Narrative Nonfiction, and Poetry ...... 51 Kathleen Rooney...... Writing the Body: Capturing the Human Pulse across Genres ...... 54 Suzanne Scanlon...... Polishing and Publishing Your Short Prose ...... 58 Mary Kay Shanley ...... The Why and How of Reflective Writing ...... 60 Sarah Strickley...... Nurturing a Daily Writing Practice ...... 63 Kali VanBaale...... Revising the Novel ...... 66

Weeklong Workshops June 17–22 Jonathan Blum...... Short Story Workshop ...... 15 Amy Butcher...... Essay Bootcamp: A Generously Generative Workshop ...... 17 Susan Taylor Chehak...... Writing Weird ...... 19 Katie Ford...... Advanced Poetry Workshop: Critique & Craft ...... 26 Sands Hall...... Novel: The Next Draft ...... 31 Christine Hemp ...... Mini-Memoirs for Podcast, Radio, and Reading Aloud ...... 32 Daniel Khalastchi...... The New You: Revising, Editing, and Recharging Your Poems ...... 38 Marc Nieson ...... Memoir: On Self & Society ...... 47 Lon Otto ...... Storyteller’s Tools: Techniques Essential to Fiction & Narrative Nonfiction . . . . . 51 Suzanne Scanlon...... The Joy of…Revision!? ...... 58 Mary Kay Shanley ...... People, Emotion, Dialogue, Place, the Senses: Five Basic Tools in All Genres . . . . . 60 Ian Stansel...... Structuring the Novel ...... 63

3 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Date

Weekend Workshops June 23–24 Timothy Bascom...... An Enormous Eye: Writing the Contemplative Essay ...... 12 Venise Berry...... Novel Writing: How to Create Powerful and Memorable Scenes ...... 14 Kelly Dwyer...... Flash Fiction in a Flash: Writing (and Submitting) Publishable Flash Fiction . . . . . 21 Hugh Ferrer...... Who’s That Knocking? (Plot Fundamentals) ...... 25 Katie Ford...... Weekend Frenzy: Write a Dozen Poems ...... 26 Eric Goodman ...... Write Funny to Me ...... 30 Sands Hall...... Do I Really Know My Narrator? Strategies for Strengthening Point of View . . . . . 31 Christine Hemp ...... Scene vs . Reflection in Personal Narrative ...... 33 Jim Heynen...... Writing Emotions ...... 34 Michael Morse...... From Either/Or to More: Giving Poems Texture & Layered Complexity ...... 46 Marc Nieson ...... The Art of Place ...... 48 Anjali Sachdeva...... Literary Magazines behind the Scenes ...... 55 Ami Silber...... Selling Your Book: Elevator Pitches, Hooks, and Back Cover Copy ...... 61 Sarah Strickley...... Writing from Life ...... 63

Weeklong Workshops June 24–29 Jeffery Renard Allen...... How Do I Start This Thing? Openings in Prose Narrative ...... 8 Timothy Bascom...... Truth Be Told: Writing the Essay of Social Witness ...... 12 Thomas K . Dean...... Finding the Story in Your Life: Narrative in Memoir & Personal Essay ...... 20 Kelly Dwyer...... Five Elements of the Novel: One for Every Day of the Workshop Week ...... 21 Hugh Ferrer...... In Convincing Style: Prose Textures, Poetic Effects ...... 25 Max Garland ...... The Poetry of Memory ...... 27 Eric Goodman ...... The Final Draft: On Finishing & Knowing When You’ve Finished Your Novel . . . . . 30 Jim Heynen...... From Memory to Art ...... 34 James McKean...... The Shape of Time in Memoir ...... 42 June Melby...... A Hedonistic Week of Creative Indulgence (for Your Muse) ...... 43 Michael Morse...... Echo, Letter, Text, Tweet: Poems As Correspondence ...... 46 Lon Otto ...... Everyone Is Strange: Developing Characters in Fiction & Narrative Nonfiction . . . . 51 Anjali Sachdeva...... The Five-Day Short Story ...... 55 Ami Silber...... What Romance Novels Can Teach Us about Writing Captivating Fiction ...... 61

Two-Week Intensive Workshop July 8-20 Paula Morris ...... Novel Manuscript Workshop ...... 45

4 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Date

Weeklong Workshops July 8–13 Mary Allen...... Encounters with Our Lives: Spiritual Writing ...... 9 Kate Aspengren...... Playwrights Workshop ...... 10 Cecile Goding...... The Perfect Lie: From Long Memory to Short Story ...... 28 Patricia Henley...... Kickstart Your First YA Novel ...... 33 Zach Savich ...... Memoir on the Brink: Emergency, Extremity, and Big Changes ...... 57 Suzanne Scanlon...... Advancing Your Memoir: The Situation and the Story ...... 58 Sandra Scofield...... Agency, Struggle, and Transformation of Character in the Novel ...... 59 Carol Spindel ...... Finding Your Threads: Shaping and Structuring Nonfiction ...... 62 Elizabeth Stuckey-French. . . . Shake Up Your Novel ...... 64 Ned Stuckey-French...... Are We There Yet? Revising Your Essay ...... 65

Weekend Workshops July 14–15 Susan Aizenberg...... Poetry and the Third Muse ...... 7 Thomas Fox Averill...... What’s Happening?—Plot in Fiction ...... 10 Linda Bendorf...... Transforming Moments of Consequence into Captivating Scenes ...... 13 Sarah Sadie Busse/ Jacqueline Briggs Martin. . . . Catching Our Own White Cows: Magic & Mystery in Children’s Picture Books . . . . 16 Margaret Chapman...... Novel Boot Camp ...... 18 Mieke Eerkens...... Getting the Words Down: A Generative Workshop in Personal Narrative ...... 24 Diana Goetsch...... Extraordinary Seeing: A Workshop for All Genres ...... 29 Wayne Johnson...... Telling the Tale: A Nonfiction Workshop ...... 36 Gordon Mennenga...... Writing Wild: Exercises in Fictional Voice ...... 44 Jude Nutter...... Pace Yourself: The Ways a Poem Moves ...... 49 Rachel Pastan...... Fear and Loathing, and Sometimes Even Joy: Getting Emotion on the Page . . . . . 52 Juliet Patterson...... The Art of Description ...... 53 Carol Spindel ...... The Overstuffed Closet: A Weekend of Mini-Memoirs ...... 62 Kali VanBaale...... Points of Entry in Storytelling ...... 66

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5 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Date Workshops by Instructor

Weeklong Workshops July 15–20 Jennifer Colville...... The Inventive Female Voice ...... 19 Hope Edelman...... The Story Beneath Your Story: A Memoir-in-Progress Workshop ...... 23 Mieke Eerkens...... Writing (and Selling!) an Effective Nonfiction Book Proposal ...... 24 Diana Goetsch...... Free-Writing Intensive: A Generative Workshop for All Writers ...... 29 Charles Holdefer ...... “Who’s Talkin’ Here?”: Dialogue vs . Narration in Prose Fiction ...... 35 Wayne Johnson...... Novel Solutions ...... 36 Jeremy Jones...... From Family History to Literary Nonfiction ...... 37 Jude Nutter...... The Freedom of Restraint: The Joy and Paradox of Formal Poetry ...... 49 Rachel Pastan...... Planning a Novel: Making a Map and Avoiding Monsters ...... 52 Juliet Patterson...... All in a Song: Exploring the Lyric Essay ...... 53 Sandra Scofield...... The Narrative Call: Polish and Deepen Your Novel Draft ...... 59 Elizabeth Stuckey-French. . . . Driving Through the Dark: Writing a Story in a Week ...... 64 Ned Stuckey-French...... An Essay in a Week ...... 65

Weekend Workshops July 21–22 Nancy K . Barry ...... Present, Past, & Imperfect: How to Manipulate Tense in Essays & Memoir ...... 11 Venise Berry...... Writing a Book Proposal ...... 14 Kelly Dwyer...... Writing the Popular Novel (in Any Genre) ...... 22 Mieke Eerkens...... PROMPTAPALOOZA! 10 Prompts to Generate 10 Beginnings in 2 Days ...... 24 Cecile Goding...... Excavating the Anecdote ...... 28 Diana Goetsch...... Craft & Vision: A Poetry Workshop ...... 30 Jeremy Jones...... Writing about Nowhere ...... 37 Malinda McCollum...... Extra/Ordinary: Merging the Real and Surreal in Fiction ...... 41 Gordon Mennenga...... The Blank Page ...... 44 Beau O’Reilly ...... Monologue in the Moment ...... 50 Sarah Saffian...... Who You Looking At? Bringing Your Profile Subject to Life ...... 56 Zach Savich ...... Exploring Poetic Form ...... 57 Sandra Scofield...... “Aboutness”: Leash Your Novel, Shape Your Writing, Pitch Your Book ...... 59 Anthony Varallo...... The Three-Jump Story: A Writer’s Weekend Challenge ...... 67

Weeklong Workshops July 22–27 Susan Aizenberg...... Writing Alone Together: A Retreat for Generating New Poems ...... 7 Nancy K . Barry ...... Transforming Letters into Essays: A Workshop on Audience and Form ...... 11 Kelly Dwyer...... Plotting the Novel ...... 22 Hope Edelman...... Starting the Memoir: From Idea to First Ten Pages ...... 23 Hugh Ferrer...... Characters in Search of an Author: The Choreography of Motivation ...... 25 Robin Hemley...... The Frangible Memoir ...... 32 Malinda McCollum...... Five-Day MFA: Fiction Writing Workshop ...... 41 Gordon Mennenga...... Decisions, Decisions: Your Novel’s First Chapters ...... 45 Juliet Patterson...... Burning Down the House (Or How to Write a Better Political Poem) ...... 53 Sarah Saffian...... Advanced Memoir: The Art and Craft of the Personal Essay ...... 56 Anthony Varallo...... First, Third, and (Sometimes) Second: A Point-of-View Fiction Workshop ...... 67

6 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Date Workshops by Instructor Susan Aizenberg

Susan Aizenberg is the author of three poetry collections: Quiet City (BkMk Press, 2015), Muse (Crab Orchard Poetry Series, 2002), and Peru in Take Three: 2/AGNI New Poets Series (Graywolf Press, 1997). She is also co-editor with Erin Belieu of The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women (Columbia University Press, 2001). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals; among them the North American Review, Numero Cinq, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, Connotation Press, Spillway, The Journal, Midwest Quarterly Review, Hunger Mountain, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Philadelphia Inquirer; and have been reprinted in several anthologies. Her awards include a Crab Orchard Poetry Series Award, the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Levis Prize for Muse, and the Nebraska Book Award Honor Book for Poetry for Quiet City. Aizenberg is Professor Emerita (creative writing and English) in the Creighton University M.F.A. and undergraduate creative writing programs and now lives and writes in Iowa City. She can be reached through her website, https://susanaizenberg.wordpress.com.

Poetry and the Third Muse: Exploring Personal, Family & Public History in Our Poems Weekend Workshop July 14-15

How do our personal and family histories intersect with the larger collective histories of which we are a part? How are our lives shaped by those of the people who came before us and the times in which they lived? How were their lives shaped by those times? What does that imply about our own lives and times? As poets, how can we explore these questions in our work? In this generative workshop we’ll explore these questions and some of the ways in which you might summon Clio, the muse of history, for your own work. We’ll spend our two days together reading and discussing poems by poets for whom she’s been an important muse, and freewriting together in class in response to proven prompts designed to inspire new work. We’ll share exercises and ideas for new poems in a supportive, no-pressure exchange as a way of discovering their “gifts”—those openings towards revision or new work. Our goal will be to send you home energized and filled with ideas for new poems and revisions. This workshop is open to poets of all levels of experience.

Writing Alone Together: A Retreat for Generating New Poems Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

We all know that writing poems is a solitary activity, but it’s often exhilarating and useful to generate work toward new poems by responding to “no-fault” prompts and exercises together in a supportive and energizing group of fellow poets. We’ll spend our week doing just that: freewriting together in class in response to proven prompts designed to inspire new poems or new ideas for poems on which we’ve been working. We’ll share exercises in a supportive and no-pressure exchange as a way of discovering the possibilities for development in what we’ve done. We’ll also be reading and discussing the work of other poets for inspiration and models. Our goal will be to spend the week in pleasurable, creative activity and to send you home from IC inspired, with exciting drafts and ideas for new work. This workshop is open to poets of all levels of experience.

7 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Jeffery Renard Allen

Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, Jeffery Renard Allen is the author of five books including the novel Song of the Shank, which is loosely based on the life of Blind Tom, a nineteenth century African American piano virtuoso and composer who was the first African American to perform at The White House. The novel was featured as the front-page review of both The New York Times Book Review and The San Francisco Chronicle. It won the CLMP Firecracker Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was also nominated for the Dublin Literary Prize. Allen’s novel Rails Under My Back won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction, and his short story collection Holding Pattern won The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His other honors include the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was a fellow at New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers and a resident at the Bellagio Center. His website is www.jefferyrenardallen.com. His collection of short stories, Fat Time, will be published in 2019.

How Do I Start This Thing?: Openings in Prose Narrative Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

In our workshop, we will look at some effective ways to begin a short story, novel, or personal essay. It is often the case that a single sentence in the opening paragraph of a story contains the seeds of the whole. This is because narrative is a reiterative form where the themes contained in a core sentence are repeated time and again throughout the work. We will see how an effective opening lends importance to other key elements of prose narrative, namely setting, conflict, physical detail (image and symbol), and the ending. As well, we will consider the ways in which the opening of a short story differs from the opening of a novel and an essay. Towards that end, we will do close readings of a wide sampling of representative texts by such authors as Anton Chekov, Flannery O’Connor, Mavis Gallant, Edward P. Jones, Junot Diaz, Harold Brodkey, Deb Olin Unferth, Don DeLillo, and John Edgar Wideman, along with lesser known but equally important authors. The readings will serve as the basis for exercises that will generate new work. We will also critique one of your own existing stories or essays or the first chapter of your novel.

8 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Mary Allen

Mary Allen is the author of a literary memoir, The Rooms of Heaven, published by Alfred A. Knopf and Vintage Books. Her second book-length memoir, Awake in the Dream House, was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship. She received an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught in the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa. She lives in Iowa City and is a full-time writing coach.

Travel Writing Made Easy, and It’s All Travel Writing Weekend Workshop June 16-17

Our travels through life are unavoidably interesting. Whatever happens to us—a hike through the desert, a night stuck in the airport, a trip to Hawaii, a stay in the hospital— anywhere we go and anything we do there—becomes a fascinating adventure if we pay close attention and turn it into a story. And turning whatever happens in our travels into something we can write about makes us pay attention to whatever’s there, while something is happening or after the fact, and that makes everything more interesting and enjoyable; even the hard stuff becomes easier. In this class, we’ll use easy, fun, foolproof writing exercises to turn our travel stories into writing that’s fresh, exciting, and surprising. We’ll create a small creative community in a strictly positive environment. And we’ll talk about how to use writing as a life tool that can turn every trip we go on, whether it’s exciting and wonderful or not so wonderful, into a transformative experience, for us and our readers, allowing us to make the most of our travels through life. We’ll also discuss issues of craft, such as creating scenes and using specific concrete details, and talk about where students can go from here. This class welcomes writers at all levels.

Encounters with Our Lives: Spiritual Writing Weeklong Workshop July 8-13

As anyone who has engaged with writing in any serious way knows, writing itself is essentially a spiritual endeavor. In order to write well it’s necessary to tap into the flow of spiritual energy inside each of us, whether we call that energy creativity or inspiration or something else. In this class, we’ll generate new work in an energizing, strictly positive environment, using prompts and in-class writing to explore the places in our lives where the moments and details intersect with meaning, our most interesting stories, and our deepest selves. We’ll use my easy foolproof method for tapping into the inner wellspring from which all good writing comes. And we’ll spend time working on editing the writing we get, using spiritual skills such as listening to intuition and briefly dropping down into the silence beyond thought, to create the best, finished writing possible. Together we’ll create a small, close-knit community that fosters creativity, engenders fresh material and new ideas, and results in writing that glows from within. This class will be useful for anyone writing essays, a memoir, or a spiritual autobiography; for anyone struggling with editing or perfectionism; and for anyone who’s just getting started or trying to locate their true material. The class welcomes writers at all levels.

9 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Kate Aspengren

Kate Aspengren (M.F.A., The University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop) has taught writing at The University of Iowa, Coe College, Grinnell College, and Cornell College. Her plays include Flyer, Rule of Nines, Our Lady of Route 52, and The Ballad of Cowgirl Christy. Her work has been published by Samuel French, Inc., produced throughout the United States and Canada, and translated for international production. She holds an annual writing residency at Tower Hill School in Wilmington, Delaware, where her adaptation of Madeleine L’Engel’s A Wrinkle in Time was produced. Kate’s middle-grade novel, Ashley Templeton is Ruining My Life, was recently published by Foreverland Press.

Playwrights Workshop Weeklong Workshop July 8-13

Getting the words down on the page is only the first step for a playwright. At some point you need to hear it read. Reading it out loud to the dog doesn’t count; you need to listen while someone else says your words. If you have at least the start of a play and are ready to take the next step and really hear what you’ve written, this week is for you. Your readers will primarily be your classmates, but when possible, we’ll have some actors in to read as well. We’ll discuss the process of submitting plays for production and publication. And for one class meeting, we’ll visit with a professional director to discuss collaboration and to better understand how a director approaches a new work for the stage.

If you have a complete script, you’ll have the opportunity to distribute it to your colleagues for discussion in its entirety. Feedback will be given in a positive and supportive atmosphere. After our week together, you’ll leave with fresh ideas for revising your play and the inspiration to put it out into the world.

Thomas Fox Averill

An O. Henry Award short story writer, Thomas Fox Averill is Professor Emeritus of English at Washburn University, where he taught creative writing for 37 years. He has published two story collections, two works of nonfiction, and five novels. His most recent book, Found Documents from the Life of Nell Johnson Doerr, was published by the University of New Mexico Press in February of 2018, and is made up entirely of fictional diaries, letters, drawings, and other documents that tell the story of an unconventional 19th-century woman who makes important fossil discoveries as an amateur scientist.

What’s Happening?—Plot in Fiction Weekend Workshop July 14-15

Plots in stories and novels take many twists and turns, as do the plots of our lives. In this weekend, we’ll discuss the need for plot, strategies for plotting, the various kinds of plots, the use of subplots, and how our plots create our meanings. The plot of the weekend: scene one, discussion; scene two, writing a series of exercises designed to help understand plot in its many forms; scene three, sharing our writing; and scene four, solving problems and coming to insightful conclusions. This is a generative class open to fiction and would-be fiction writers of all levels.

10 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Nancy K. Barry

Nancy K. Barry (Ph.D., University of Illinois) is a playwright and essayist who teaches creative writing, poetry, and nonfiction at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Her essays have appeared in Iowa Woman, the Chicago Tribune, and The Baltimore Sun. In 2010, she transformed a memoir about her year spent teaching writing and undergoing breast cancer treatment into a one-woman show, Lessons from Cancer College, which was produced in several theatres in Iowa and Minnesota.

Present, Past, and Imperfect: How to Manipulate Tense in Essays and Memoir Weekend Workshop July 21-22

This course is designed for writers who work in short personal essays or extended prose memoirs and sometimes find themselves stuck on the varieties of past and present verb tenses, not to mention the pesky “perfect” forms that can sabotage the best of sentences. To understand how time works within memoirs, we need to be able to manipulate several time zones at once: the present moment of the writer engaging with the subject; the past tense of events that happened once and only once, and the ever-present time zone in which the impact of those events continues to live on in the mind of the writer and reader. The course will use exercises and revision techniques to help us understand how to manipulate the presentation of time in nonfiction memoirs. You should plan to bring either a short personal essay or a section from a memoir in process.

Transforming Letters into Essays: A Workshop on Audience and Form Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

Many of us have either a digital archive or a paper-weighted box of letters we have written that capture our voice, our daily dramas (large and small), and sometimes even our most fully-articulated selves. Indeed, sometimes when we read essays, we feel intuitively that they capture the spirit and style of a great letter. In this workshop, we will work to transform the “best bits” of letters we have written (or even received) into essays that transcend the particular time and place of their origin. The workshop is intended for beginning or intermediate nonfiction writers who want to explore turning their personal missives into nonfiction that is suitable for a wider audience. Workshop time will be spent composing new letters for this purpose, revising letters we bring to class for a wider audience through daily exercises, and reading with a helpful critique our early drafts of essays based on letters. Throughout the week, we will focus on how to discover the shape of material embedded in our prose once we decide to enlarge our audience.

11 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Timothy Bascom

Tim Bascom is author of the memoir Running to the Fire (University of Iowa Press, 2015), which is about coming of age as the son of missionaries in Ethiopia during a Marxist Revolution. His earlier memoir, Chameleon Days (Houghton Mifflin), won the Bakeless Literary Prize. He is also the author of a collection of essays and a novel. His writing has won editor’s prizes at The Missouri Review and Florida Review and been anthologized in Best Creative Nonfiction and Best American Travel Writing. Bascom, who received his M.F.A. from The University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, is Director of Creative Writing at Waldorf University.

An Enormous Eye: Writing the Contemplative Essay Weekend Workshop June 23-24

According to art critic Herbert Read, “True art persists as an object of contemplation.” One of the reasons that it has this capacity to hold our attention—like the note of a tuning fork after it has been struck—is that it has been created out of contemplation. The contemplative essay, also called the reflective essay, is characterized by an intense and concentrated focus. The author tends to circle a subject, spiraling away and dropping back to describe it from all angles and to plumb it for further meaning. Contemplative essays may seem almost “spiritual” as a result, since they are written out of extreme awareness. They may explore an explicitly religious experience or turn toward nature. They may circle some quite-quirky subjects: a dying moth, a surgeon’s knife, a horse rider in a circus. We will read from a range of essays, looking for contemplative techniques and searching for our own possible “objects of contemplation.” Writers of all levels are welcome. Our aim is to generate new material that can be workshopped during the time together.

Truth Be Told: Writing the Essay of Social Witness Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

Some essays look inward; others look out, drawing attention to disturbing social concerns. Through writing, the author gives witness to an injustice, bringing it to light so that readers will become more aware and more likely to respond. In the 1930’s George Orwell described a Burmese man being hanged, exposing the failure of the colonial British system. In the 1990’s Terry Tempest Williams wrote about cancer in her Utah family as a way to expose the damages of U.S. nuclear testing. In 2009 Eula Biss wrote about white looters after a tornado in Iowa to throw light on the double standard used regarding black looters in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Whether you are concerned about racial profiling, gender politics, health issues, body image, environmental degradation, gun violence, refugee treatment, dwindling resources, the cost of health care, or something entirely different, this workshop is your chance to act as a witness, drawing attention to what matters. Of course, most of the essays of this sort come from genuine eye-witnesses, involving a degree of direct experience, but in all cases they shine the light outward onto what needs exposure. This is an intermediate workshop. We will critique one essay in progress, and we will begin at least one new essay of witness. Participants are invited—but not required— to bring a draft of an emerging social witness essay.

12 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Linda Bendorf

Linda M. Bendorf (M.A.T., J.D., The University of Iowa) is an award-winning instructor and writing coach who has inspired both novice and seasoned writers in the Iowa Summer Writing Festival for more than two decades. Linda’s essays, features, and poetry have appeared in the Chicago Tribune Media Group’s Triblocal, The University of Iowa’s The Daily Palette, USA Today, Gannett News Service Wire, Des Moines Register, Instructor, The Iowan, and Gather Magazine. Linda is also director of Blue Sage Writing (www. bluesagewriting.com), which offers workshops, one-on-one coaching, and private writing retreats. In 2018, Linda and artist/author E.M. Sloan will lead a weeklong workshop (“Your Legacy as Memoir...The Essence of a Life”) in Boulder, Colorado. Linda and her husband, Carl, live on Colorado’s Front Range where they hike, bird, bike and marvel at the ever-changing sunsets over the Rockies.

Transforming Moments of Consequence into Captivating Scenes in Fiction & Nonfiction Weekend Workshop July 14-15

In his book, Making Shapely Fiction, author Jerome Stern advises: “Remember the wisdom of the child: make a scene when we really want everyone’s full attention … Create an event so your readers can feel the drama of the moment.” Smith Magazine defined “The Moment” as the key experience, “a moment of opportunity, serendipity, calamity or chaos”—whose effect was revelatory, profound and life-changing. Subtle or dramatic, significant, fixed moments can be positive, joyful, difficult or heart-wrenching. They impact us in some way, and create a chain of cascading events for us in real life, or for the characters on our pages: the time you defied workplace policy; heard music for the first time through cochlear ear implants; made a copy of the key to the evidence room; discovered a list of your mother’s most cherished memories (most or none of which included you); found your father’s true identity; signed papers to bring home the emaciated puppy after it managed to lick your palm; turned away from a child with outstretched hands; stood up to hate speech; picked up on that shifty expression that confirmed you’d been duped.

Come write these experiences—your real ones or those from the life of a character in your short story or novel. During our weekend, plan to generate and flesh out several of your key moments in a way that captivates readers from the start. At a future point, you can incorporate each scene into a longer piece or use them to jumpstart new pieces. Our tools: stellar examples, assignments, discussions and a guided in-class writing technique to help you capture the vitality of these defining moments. This technique is a valuable take-away for new or seasoned writers. Expect to draft two to three new scenes and to rework one to share.

13 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Venise Berry

Venise Berry (M.A., The University of Iowa; Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin) is the author of three national bestselling novels: So Good, An African American Love Story; All of Me, A Voluptuous Tale; and Colored Sugar Water. A book of essays, Driven: love, career and the pursuit of happiness, is currently with her agent. Berry’s co-edited anthology, Black Culture & Experience: Contemporary Issues, was published by Peter Lang. She is also the co-author of two nonfiction books on film, The Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema (Scarecrow Press) and The 50 Most Influential Black Films (Citadel). Another co-edited anthology, Mediated Messages and African-American Culture: Contemporary Issues, won the Meyers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America in 1997. Berry is the recipient of the Creative Contribution to Literature Award from the Zora Neale Hurston Society and the Honor Book Award (for All of Me) from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Additional work, including short stories, journal articles, and book chapters appears in a range of creative and academic publications. Berry’s research focuses on media, African Americans, and popular culture. She is an associate professor of Journalism and African American Studies at The University of Iowa.

Muddy Water: Controlling Plot, Subplots, and Plot Points in Your Novel Weekend Workshop June 16-17

How do you create a strong and exciting plot in your novel? How do you connect the plot with various subplots? How do you place plot points effectively throughout your story? This workshop will help you develop or strengthen your novel’s main plot. It will also help you better understand the use of subplots and the purpose of plot points. To write a great novel it is crucial to recognize how the plot, subplots and plot points create the main sequence of events and determine the best way to use them to move your story from beginning to end. This workshop is designed primarily for new writers who are starting with a story idea or only a few completed pages.

Novel Writing: How to Create Powerful and Memorable Scenes Weekend Workshop June 23-24

This workshop offers you an opportunity to expand your knowledge of scene writing and enhance your ability to write more compelling scenes. Through a variety of exercises, we will explore how to use elements like color, tradition, food, music, seasons, environment, horoscopes, and more to create powerful and memorable scenes. Each day, participants will complete various scene exercises outside of class and share this new writing in workshop with the group. This class can help if you are just beginning your novel, or if you have already begun and want to deepen your skills in this essential element of craft.

Writing a Book Proposal Weekend Workshop July 21-22

A book proposal is your introduction to an agent or editor. It should answer two primary questions: Why will this book be successful? Why are you the best person to write it? This workshop will focus on helping participants begin the process of writing a proposal for various nonfiction genres, such as memoir, history, essays, autobiography, anthology, resource, self-help, how-to, humor, and more. Aspects of the proposal we will discuss and develop in our time together include: the title, hook, market, promotion, author bio, and outline. This class is for writers at any stage of the book-writing process.

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Jonathan Blum

Jonathan Blum grew up in Miami and graduated from UCLA and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the author of Last Word (Rescue Press, 2013), a novella, which was named one of the best books of the year by Iowa Public Radio and was featured on KCRW’s Bookworm with host Michael Silverblatt. His short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Carolina Quarterly, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, Playboy, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. He has taught fiction writing at Drew University and The University of Iowa. He received a Hawthornden fellowship in Scotland and was a guest writer at the Tianjin Binhai New Area International Writing Program in China. He is also the recipient of a Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award and a grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. This is his eighth year teaching at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. He lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches fiction writing workshops. He can be found online at jonathanblumwriter.com.

Creating Compelling Characters in Fiction Weekend Workshop June 16-17

How does one create a character? And more to the point, how does one create a character who is so interesting that a reader will want to spend an entire story or novel with him? In this course, which welcomes fiction writers of all levels, we will examine how to create complex and compelling characters. We will spend part of our time discussing how to build characters in the first place—how, from the get- go, to make them as credible and distinct as we can. But most of our time will be spent doing exercises that help you explore the many facets of your characters, which is to say, what makes them absorbing and fully human. You will get to know your characters within a range of physical settings, time periods, and dramatic situations. You will gain insight into what motivates your characters and in what ways your characters are capable of change. Along the way, you will discover many of your strengths as an imaginative writer as well as some of your blind spots. By the end of the weekend, you will better appreciate the dimensions (and mysteries) of your characters as well as have a fresh understanding of how those characters can be woven into stories.

Short Story Workshop Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

When was the last time you read a story you couldn’t put down? We all want to write such stories, but how do we do it? In this class, we will workshop short stories of up to 18 pages, with the goal of helping each writer identify and build on the strengths of his/her story. In so doing, we will discuss what makes a story irresistible. Among the questions we will consider: In what ways does this story engage and move us? Does the story have a recognizable structure that serves the writer’s artistic aims? Do the events that make up the plot connect to create meaning? Do we have a strong sense of who the characters are? Is setting used effectively? Does the language capture our imagination? What is the story really about? Class discussion will be frank, focused, and supportive. Throughout the week, you will also do writing exercises designed to sharpen your fiction writing skills and generate new work. By the end of the week, you will go home not only with fresh ideas for revision but with what could be the beginnings of new stories.

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Sarah Sadie Busse

Sarah Sadie Busse helps people connect to their creativity and to each other. Her poetry chapbook, Do-It- Yourself Paper Airplanes, was published by Five Oaks Press in 2015, and a full-length collection, We Are Traveling Through Dark at Tremendous Speeds, came out from LitFest Press in spring 2016. Winner of the Lorine Niedecker, Posner, and Pushcart Prizes, she teaches in a variety of locations, works with poets one on one, and hosts occasional retreats for writers and other creative types.

Catching Our Own White Cows: Magic & Mystery in Children’s Picture Books Weekend Workshop July 14-15 (with Jacqueline Briggs Martin)

Coincidence? Mystery? Magic? How does the white cow get away in Tres Seymour’s Hunting the White Cow? How does the crayon in Harold’s Purple Crayon come to have special powers? Some books leave us with questions, leave us wondering. And often those are the books we best remember, the ones readers of all ages think about and talk about again and again.

In this workshop for picture book writers of all levels, we will consider how to bring the uncanny, the inexplicable, into our writing and yet tell a satisfying story. We will talk about how to create stories that leave the reader pondering a bit of unexplained “magic.” Not the magic of wands and fairy godmothers, but of small surprises and powerful coincidences. Charles DeLint writes, “When you are touched by magic, nothing’s ever quite the same again.” How do we set the stage for that magic, that wonder, in our story? How do we balance it with the story’s reality?

Plan to bring your picture book manuscript or 2-5 pages of poetry (800 words or fewer) to our workshop. We will discuss ways these pieces can be strengthened, perhaps with a touch of the magical or mysterious. Our emphasis this weekend will be on process, as we learn, through critique and conversation, how to strengthen our stories and our poems. We hope also to generate some new writing during our time together through exercises and free-writing.

Amy Butcher

Amy Butcher is an award-winning essayist and author of Visiting Hours (Blue Rider Press/Penguin- Random House), a 2015 memoir that earned starred reviews and praise from The New York Times Sunday Review of Books, NPR, The Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and others. Additional essays have appeared recently in The New York Times “Modern Love,” The New York Times “Opinion,” Harper’s, The Iowa Review, Brevity, Fourth Genre, and Guernica. Her work received the grand prize in the 2016 Solas Awards’ “Best Travel Writing” series and in The Iowa Review awards for nonfiction judged by David Shields. Her writing has been featured on BBC Radio and National Public Radio and was selected for inclusion in Best Travel Writing 2016. Her essays have twice been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and twice been distinguished by the Best American Essays series. Her 2016 New York Times op-ed, “Emoji Feminism,” inspired Google to propose 11 new female, professionally-empowered emojis, now included in smartphone software packaging and on display at the Design Museum in London. Amy is a graduate of The University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. She presently serves as an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University.

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The Literary Memoir Weekend Workshop June 16-17

Once upon a time, long before the Age of Oprah, writers who had lived through something fascinating or terrible or both would turn their experiences into exaggerated works and call them fiction. Nowadays, however, these experiences equally take the form of memoir—ruminative, retrospective narratives that comprise a sub-genre of the diverse and expansive genre we typically call creative nonfiction. What does this mean? It means, for one, that the artful, lyrical rendering of personal narratives is increasingly considered valuable and, as luck would have it, marketable in the literary world; experiences once deemed so humiliating or painful that people hid them are now so remunerative that some writers even make them up. But what makes a memoir literary, how do these works best function, and how are they differentiated from autobiography, anecdotal prose, or simple recollection? Considering the flood of memoir manuscripts on the market—the Nielsen BookScan reports a 400% increase published between 2004 and today—how can we elevate our own personal narratives into artful, meaningful work worthy of readership? In this class, we’ll study and discuss excerpts from some of the most successful and surprising literary memoirs on the market. We will work to engage and understand the idea that memoir is less interested in the past than in the act of remembering and identifying the many ways past selves continue to inform who we are in the present. Perhaps more importantly, students will develop ideas, a conceptual framework, and key excerpts through extensive in-class and take-home exercises, which we’ll read aloud and consider while offering thorough, critical feedback. This course will especially emphasize the evocative and lasting nature of brevity, the significance in subverting a reader’s expectations, and the power inherent to memoirs that invert conceptual and chronological order. You’ll leave, in other words, with all you need to tell, and sell, your story.

Essay Bootcamp: A Generously Generative Workshop Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

You’re out of shape, bored of the same routine, or simply haven’t had the time to keep that promise you made to yourself in January. You’re stuck, in other words, in one way or in several. You need that extra push. Welcome to Essay Bootcamp. In this course, we’ll sweat our way back into the writing chair and work our way up to heavy lifting—of pencils and of thought—through a dozen new and generative exercises guaranteed to jumpstart a year of writing. Shaped closely by in-class discussions of a wide variety of both contemporary and canonical essayistic forms (including personal essays, narrative essays, braided essays, lyric essays, and experimental essays, to name a few), our exercises will target point-of- view, chronology, form, voice, and structure, above all requiring us to weave those abstract qualities of beauty and truth—the two pillars of strong, memorable literary essays. While we’ll find ourselves working out daily, worry not: there’s no need to hit the gym. Here, victory takes the shape of new and meaningful work. By the end of our time together, students will have the beginning framework for a dozen new essays, substantial notes for one such essay’s revision through a thorough and constructive critical workshop, and most importantly, deep connections with fellow writers to ensure accountability long beyond your time in Iowa. There is perhaps no greater burn than that found in constructing artful narratives of our lives, and together, we’ll reap the rewards as we sweat our way into peak prose-ical fitness.

17 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Margaret Chapman

Margaret Patton Chapman is the author of a novella-in-flash, Bell and Bargain, published as part of the collection My Very End of the Universe. Her very short fiction has appeared in Wigleaf, The Collagist, Smokelong, and the anthology The Way We Sleep, among others, and her music and arts reporting has been published in the Independent Weekly and the Austin Chronicle. She received her M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and taught writing as a Visiting Professor at Indiana University South Bend. She is prose editor for decomP magazine and lives in Durham, NC. Find more of her work at margaretpattonchapman.com.

Novel Boot Camp Weekend Workshop July 14-15

In this course, which is more seminar than workshop, you’ll learn the basics of novel craft, with a focus on plot, structure, and character. We’ll discuss how authors build and use dramatic tension to compel the story forward; we’ll also cover traps beginning novelists should avoid. This class will be most helpful to writers new to the novel, including beginning writers and writers wanting to attempt a new form. Whether you have a number of pages but aren’t sure where they are going, or just an idea you’ve been meaning to get down on paper, you’ll leave this weekend with new writing and a plan for moving forward with your novel.

Susan Taylor Chehak

Susan Taylor Chehak is the author of several novels, including The Great Disappointment, Smithereens, and The Minor Apocalypse of Meena Krejci. Her short stories have been published widely in journals and were most recently collected in It’s Not About the Dog: Stories. Her other ongoing projects include All the Lost Girls, a collection of essays devoted to exploring the lost girl archetype and the grip her story continues to have on our cultural imagination; The Foreverland Chronicles, in which she is creating a detailed narrative record of her fictional Foreverland and its denizens; The Awakening, a young adult novel set in a near-future of world catastrophe and adolescent hope; and What Happened to Paula, a collaborative investigation into the as-yet unsolved murder of a former schoolmate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Susan has taught fiction writing in the low-residency M.F.A. program at Antioch University Los Angeles, the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, and the University of Southern California. Susan grew up in Cedar Rapids, has spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, lives occasionally in Toronto, and at present calls the Colorado Rocky Mountains home.

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Writing Weird Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

The term “weird” was first used by Sheridan Le Fanu, a popular author of nineteenth-century ghost stories, and in his long essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” H.P. Lovecraft defines the genre for us: “The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”

In this workshop we’ll take a tour of the territory of the Weird, where we’ll have an opportunity to create our own definition of what the Weird is; to discover the Weird already lurking in our world and in ourselves; to develop strategies for tapping into the Weird in order to successfully render it in our work; and finally, to learn how and where to publish our own personal brands of the Weird. This class is suitable for all genres at all levels. There will be in-class writing, overnight assignments, and sharing of work.

Jennifer Colville

Jennifer Colville holds an M.F.A. from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from The University of Utah. Her stories have appeared in The Literary Review, the Mississippi Review, The Iowa Review, and on the Huffington Post. A collection of short stories, Elegies for Uncanny Girls, was published by Indiana University Press in 2017. She is the founding editor of PromptPress, a journal for the interplay of visual art and writing. Jennifer has taught at The University of Iowa, San Francisco State, the University of San Francisco, and Coe College. She now co-organizes the Free Generative Writing Workshops in Iowa City.

The Inventive Female Voice Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

“Woman must put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement.” —Hélène Cixous

Women have produced some of the most inventive writing of the last century. This class will take its cues from writers such as Virginia Woolf, and Gertrude Stein—both of whom boldly subverted traditional sentence structure, logic, and narrative to create forms that rang true to their experience of the world. We’ll touch base with Gloria Anzaldua and Theresa Cha, hybrid writers who crafted fierce political and personal tomes out of the everyday scraps: recipes, worksheets, songs, photographs, and letters to government officials. Our questions: How can women find a frame that fits our unruly experiences of self and body? How do we milk the interruptions, the stolen moments common to our experience as writers? How can we begin to make and break our own rules? This class will be multi-genre and generative, though time will be allotted to workshop pre-existing pieces. This class welcomes writers of all levels, those who already experiment to those who want to play, explore, and invent.

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Thomas K. Dean

Thomas K. Dean (Ph.D., The University of Iowa) is Senior Presidential Writer/Editor at The University of Iowa, where he also teaches interdisciplinary courses. He has taught writing, literature, and interdisciplinary subjects at Cardinal Stritch College (Milwaukee), Michigan State University, and Moorhead State University (Minnesota). Dean’s essays appear in regional and national publications. His books include The Grace of Grass and Water: Writing in Honor of Paul Gruchow (edited collection, Ice Cube Press, 2007) and Under a Midland Sky (memoir/personal essays, Ice Cube Press, 2008). His collection of essays and photographs, tentatively called Prairie Eye, with co-author Cindy Crosby is expected from Ice Cube Press in 2018.

Revising Sentences for Impact Weekend Workshop June 16–17

Most writers want to write sentences that are clear and that communicate their intended meaning well. Certainly, that’s what editors look for. Much of a writer’s creativity lies in his or her talent at choosing and arranging words imaginatively. But much of your style also depends on some technicalities about what kind of word forms you choose and where you put them in your sentences. This workshop will focus primarily on those technicalities—not so much choosing the right words, but choosing the right word forms and putting them in your sentences where you get the most “bang for your buck,” so to speak. This means placing the most important words in the most powerful positions in the sentence, weeding out weak function words, emphasizing active verbs, and so forth. We’ll be looking at how to chip away the extraneous material to reveal the beautiful, shining sentence that packs a punch. (Just to be clear—we will be talking about revision at the sentence level; we won’t be addressing overall organization.) Participants don’t need to be grammar experts, but a basic understanding of a sentence’s subject-verb-object structure will be helpful. We’ll do a lot of exercises, but also work on sentences we generate during our time together. While it is not required, participants are welcome to bring writing from home that we’ll work on together as a class. Since we will be talking about traditional grammatical sentences, the class emphasizes prose over poetry, but of any type or genre—personal writing, fiction, professional and technical writing, etc.

Finding the Story in Your Life: Narrative in Memoir and Personal Essay Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

One of the most common questions memoir and personal essay writers have is how to structure writing about life experience. An easy answer is to start from the beginning and write down events in chronological order. That can work, but writers of all experience levels know there is more to it—that telling one’s story involves more than a mere list of events. Life writing also must have drama and meaning. This workshop focuses on how narrative—telling a story—can be perhaps one of the most powerful tools for enlivening and exploring one’s life story. The workshop will focus on some of the traditional techniques of narrative—plot, character, dialogue, and so forth—in order to make a memoir or personal essay an engaging read. But we will also explore how story types can help structure a life story in different contexts and patterns in order to discover and convey the meaning intended—or perhaps one the writer never realized was there. Workshop activities will include exercises, discussion of readings, and workshopping participants’ own writing. Participants can either bring previously written work for the workshop or write new material during the week.

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Kelly Dwyer

Kelly Dwyer is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of two novels, The Tracks of Angels and Self-Portrait with Ghosts, and two children’s books; her monologues and short plays have been produced in Madison, Boston, and New York. She grew up in California and lives in Baraboo (near Madison), Wisconsin, where she teaches creative writing part-time, does freelance manuscript editing, and is working on a novel, more plays, and flash fiction inspired by the Disney Princesses at middle age. Visit her online at www.KellyDwyerAuthor.com.

Flash Fiction in a Flash: Writing (and Submitting) Publishable Flash Fiction Weekend Workshop June 23-24

Flash fiction is fiction that tells a story in a flash—anywhere from six words (“For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never worn.”—attributed to Hemingway) to a thousand words. Print magazines and online journals love flash fictions, because they don’t take up a lot of space; readers love them, because they can read a story in the time it takes to down their morning coffee; and many writers love to revel in their challenges and rewards. In this weekend workshop, we will discuss what flash fiction is and what makes it interesting, we will study and discuss some excellent examples, and of course, we will complete exercises and assignments that will inspire us to write our own. Our goal is to leave the workshop on Sunday with a few pieces of finished fiction, ready to send out for publication, that tell a story in a beautiful, breath-taking flash. And you’ll also leave with a list of some of the best literary journals to which to send them. This workshop is intended for writers of all levels and is devoted to creating new material.

Five Elements of the Novel: One for Every Day of the Workshop Week Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

While there are numerous elements of a novel, it would be difficult—if not quite impossible—to write a successful novel without these five elements in particular: plot, character, dialogue, point of view, and theme. And while of course the elements intertwine, we’ll spend one day focusing on each of them, discussing how to develop each one deeply and successfully in our novels, and doing in-class writing and exercises. By the end of the week, writers will have the skills to continue to develop their plots and characters, the confidence and ability to write good dialogue, the know-how to choose a point of view, and the understanding of how to develop and deepen their novels’ themes.

This course is best suited for intermediate and advanced writers. Participants are free to bring existing novels with them or not; our focus will be on generating new material rather than workshopping existing material, but writers may feel free to work on existing characters, plots, and so on if they like.

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Kelly Dwyer Writing the Popular Novel (in Any Genre) (continued) Weekend Workshop July 21-22

No matter the genre in which you’re interested—literary, science fiction, paranormal, young adult, romance, etc.—you would probably think it ideal if your novel had many readers. If it attracted buzz. If it were, in other words, popular.

In this weekend workshop, using best sellers, myths, and computer models, we’ll discuss elements that make popular novels across genres so…popular, and we’ll do exercises on various elements of the novel (such as character, plotting, pacing, and language) to increase the odds that our own novels will become the next Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone/Gone Girl/Insert This Summer’s Hit Title Here…. This workshop is for writers of all levels. We will focus on generating new material.

Plotting the Novel Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

W. Somerset Maugham has said that there are three rules to writing a novel but that, unfortunately, no one knows what they are. We might safely assume though, that one of these rules might have something to do with plot: Maybe we should have one in our novels? Maybe it would be helpful to plan the plot out ahead of time?

In this workshop, we’ll do various exercises to help us develop and deepen our plots. We’ll work on ways in which our plots might arise out of character, and we’ll discuss issues such as how to create more intensity and how (possibly) to juggle and integrate more than one plot at a time. We’ll spend additional time sharing our ideas and plots with one another. By the time the week is over, everyone will have a general outline for a novel plot, and many writers will have a more detailed, annotated outline as well; such tools will make it practicable for all to go home and write their novels.

This workshop is for writers of all levels. Our primary focus will be on generating new material. Writers are welcome to come to the workshop already “in” a novel, or with absolutely no start on a novel idea at all, or somewhere between these two extremes.

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Hope Edelman

Hope Edelman is the author of eight nonfiction books, including the bestseller Motherless Daughters and the eBook Boys Like That: Two Cautionary Tales of Love. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications, ranging from The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, and Real Simple to The Iowa Review, Brevity.com, and Assay. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year designation, as well as honors from the Medill Hall of Achievement at Northwestern University and the University of Iowa Alumni Fellows program. Hope lives with her husband and two daughters in Los Angeles, where she is working on a new book about the long tail of grief. This is her 18th summer teaching in the Festival.

The Story Beneath Your Story: A Memoir-in-Progress Workshop Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

Memoirists face two essential tasks: First, to craft the episodic story of what happened in the past, and second, to reveal the story of one’s own change and growth over time. That second story is where the author’s larger message is conveyed, elevating one person’s experience from the unique and personal to the universal and shared. It reveals what your story is about. But how do we extract that deeper message from a story, and articulate it to readers in a meaningful way? And how can we expect to achieve this, if we haven’t yet discovered what that larger message is?

As Vivian Gornick has emphasized, what happened to an author is not what matters. What matters is what the author makes of those experiences. This class will help you clarify what you make of your own story, and then give you tools for sharing these insights with readers. Together, we’ll identify the underlying themes and archetypes of your nonfiction narrative. We’ll also work on creating passages of reflection and analysis that will resonate deeply with readers. Come to this workshop with pages you’ve already polished, or first-draft work. Plan to share what you write during the week, and to give to other students as much as you’ll receive in return.

Starting the Memoir: From Idea to First Ten Pages Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

The first few pages of a memoir are the most critical ones. They determine whether readers become invested in your story, and whether they’ll follow it into Chapter Two. This course is for students of all levels who want to write a book-length memoir or have started one already and hope to “hook” readers from the start.

We’ll begin by talking about narrative structure to understand story arcs. Then we’ll discuss several methods for opening a memoir, including Prologues, Prefaces, and Introductions. We’ll compare the opening pages of memoirs by Kathy Dobie, Antwone Fisher, Sarah Hepola, Joe Loya, and Joanna Rakoff to see how different authors have chosen to introduce their themes. You’ll have the chance to share and receive feedback on your opening pages, too.

While you should arrive with a clear idea of the story you want to tell, our focus will be on a very narrow portion—the first ten pages. By the end of the week you should have several of those pages written and a blueprint for more.

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Mieke Eerkens

Mieke Eerkens is a Dutch-American writer who grew up between Los Angeles and The Netherlands. She earned an M.A. from the University of Leiden in The Netherlands, and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Magid Center for Undergraduate Writing and currently teaches creative writing for UCLA Extension. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Review of Books, Pen America, Pank, Guernica, and Creative Nonfiction, among others. Her work has further been anthologized in Best Travel Writing 2011; Norton’s Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo- Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, “Found” Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts; and A Book of Uncommon Prayer, selected as a “notable essay” in Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. All Ships Follow Me, a book about her parents’ experiences in WWII and the inheritance of war trauma, is forthcoming from Picador.

Getting the Words Down: A Generative Workshop in Personal Narrative Weekend Workshop July 14-15

You want to write. But you sit at your desk, and nothing comes. All of us need a little push now and then to get the creative juices flowing. This course will give you that push in a fun, low-pressure atmosphere. In each session, we will discuss short examples of published work to inspire us, followed by one or more specific writing prompts we’ll respond to in class. The emphasis will be on really letting go and releasing our creativity to get the words on the page. We will share the material we generate with each other and provide feedback in a supportive, respectful community. Writers of all skill levels are invited to participate. By the end of our weekend, you’ll have at least six unique “seeds” to further develop at home.

Writing (and Selling!) an Effective Nonfiction Book Proposal Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

Writing a book is a lot of work. Often, after investing years on a project, writers fail to find a publisher for their finished work. Others struggle to find their way to the page as they juggle day jobs and writing time. What if you could sell your idea for a book long before you’ve finished writing it, secure in the knowledge that it will be published? What if you received an advance for your idea that helped buy you the time you need to write? This happens all the time in the publishing world, when books are sold on proposal. This workshop will guide you step by step through crafting the different sections of a book proposal you’ll pitch to publishers. Our areas of focus will include your synopsis, identifying and analyzing comparable publications in the market, a marketing plan, and a chapter outline, among others. We’ll look at sample book proposals as models, including the instructor’s own proposal, which was used to secure a book deal with a major publisher and foreign rights in multiple countries.

PROMPTAPALOOZA! Ten Prompts to Generate Ten Beginnings in Two Days Weekend Workshop July 21-22

This fun weekend promises to stock you with enough fresh material for ten essays, stories, or even a book, to flesh out after our time together in Iowa City. In an invigorating, supportive, no-pressure environment, we’ll use tested and effective writing prompts to get some beginnings down on paper. We’ll have time to discuss and share our writing at the end of class each day and get feedback on how to proceed with the work we’ve started. You’ll also receive a list of prompts to help you generate new writing when you return home. Ten prompts. Two days. Let’s do this!

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Hugh Ferrer

Hugh Ferrer (M.F.A. in fiction, The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop) is a senior editor at The Iowa Review and the associate director of The University of Iowa International Writing Program. He has taught a variety of courses at The University of Iowa, introducing undergraduates to fiction writing, international literature, journal publishing, and Iowa City’s literary culture.

Who’s That Knocking? (Plot Fundamentals) Weekend Workshop June 23-24

Not every story needs the cranked-up tension of Indiana Jones fleeing a boulder-sized bowling ball, and not every novel needs the nail-biting suspense of a murder mystery; but if a reader doesn’t care what’s happening scene to scene, or the plot doesn’t intrigue us on some level, the jig is up. In this weekend session, open to all levels, we’ll explore the basics of plotting and look for answers to perennial questions: How much information should we withhold? How off-balance do we want the reader to be and for how long? How high do the stakes have to be? Through guided exercises, we’ll explore how tension can beef up scenes. In addition, we’ll discuss some of the ways (we could never cover them all!) that writers approach the larger patterns of promises, revelations, and twists.

In Convincing Style: Prose Textures, Poetic Effects Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

Contemporary fiction and creative non-fiction often leave the reader to decide what a story means. Think: complex characters, morally ambiguous situations, judgment-free (or unreliable, or multiple) narrators. Themes are suggested, never imposed; moral emotions are awoken, but not necessarily resolved. The modern reader wants to be moved without being preached at. Such literary effects demand a delicate coherence. In this generative workshop, open to writers already comfortable with the fundamentals, we’ll go beyond plot, character, and setting, to look at how style and structure can focus a story, steer sympathy, and subtly reinforce the ideas at play. We’ll experiment with different styles of narrative persuasion, including the effects created by blending fact and fiction; and we’ll draft passages and scenes that open interesting gaps for a reader to navigate. You’ll come away with new pages, the start, I hope, of future projects, and a greater sense of your own work’s potential profundity.

Characters in Search of an Author: The Choreography of Motivation Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

Pet peeves, love spells, jealousies, invented ideals: character-driven fiction is an invitation to move beyond consistency. An ill-advised whim can grow into a ruling passion. The bad guy, superstitious, rushes to establish a charity. Loyalties shift. A desire may leap from the heart of one character into the heart of another. After the king’s death, the queen dies not of grief, but because she glimpses her double leaving the funeral. Possibilities unfold in all directions. In this wide-ranging generative workshop for all levels of fiction writer, the classical protagonist will get a makeover. Through exercises and free writing, we’ll explore how a more fluid sense of motivation shapes a story.

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Katie Ford

Katie Ford is the author of Deposition, Colosseum, and Blood Lyrics, the third of which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and the Rilke Prize. Colosseum was named among the “Best Books of 2008” by Publishers Weekly and the Virginia Quarterly Review and led to a Lannan Literary Fellowship and the Larry Levis Prize. The New Yorker, The Norton Introduction to Literature, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and The American Poetry Review have published her poems. Her next book, If You Have To Go, will be published by Graywolf Press in August. She is Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the M.F.A. Program at the University of California, Riverside, and has taught poetry for fifteen years. She lives in South Pasadena with her young daughter, Maggie.

Advanced Poetry Workshop: Critique & Craft Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

This workshop is a communal effort toward deep and considered critique of original poems set before us by workshop participants. Our goal together will be a studied effort toward the powerful, mesmerizing poem, no matter what style or form the poem before us takes. The beginning half of each session will focus on a sample of masterful poems from history that might act as guides and examples of poetic techniques, including lineation, lyricism, diction, form, and figuration. We will dedicate the other half of each session to workshop. Each participant will have three poems considered by the class. These poems will not be required to be sent in advance. Outside of class, each participant will conference individually with me over two separate poems, leaving the week with a renewed vigor toward five poems and my high hopes that the techniques and questions of the course will leave a lasting impression upon the artistry of your future work.

Weekend Frenzy: Write a Dozen Poems Weekend Workshop June 23-24

In this generative weekend course, we will spend the majority of each session writing from original prompts designed to wrench you out of your ruts and open you to the vast array of poetic shapes and styles. To that end, you’ll receive a selection of poems throughout the weekend that we will discuss in order to ignite our creativity toward our own new drafts. A wide variety of exercises will be practiced, with a goal of twelve new “starts” or drafts. This course will be productive for any student—the person who has never written a poem and the person who has published books. Whatever level you are at, new methods must be forged in order to keep the imagination vital. In preparation, purchase a notebook and many pens.

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Max Garland

Max Garland is the author of The Word We Used for It, winner of the 2017-18 Brittingham Poetry Prize. Previous books include The Postal Confessions, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry, and Hunger Wide as Heaven, which won the Cleveland State Poetry Center Open Competition. He has received an NEA Poetry Fellowship, a Michener Fiction fellowship, inclusion in Best American Short Stories, and fellowships in both poetry and fiction from the Wisconsin Arts Board. A native of Kentucky, where he worked as a rural letter carrier on the route where he was born, he is Professor Emeritus at UW-Eau Claire and the current Writer- in-Residence for the city of Eau Claire. He is also a songwriter and the former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin.

The Poetry of Memory Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

“If we spend our lives remembering what we love/to be sure who we are…” begins a Richard Hugo poem. The poet goes on, partly recovering and partly fabricating a distant memory of place and time. The combination of recovery and creativity, the shaping, re-shaping, recalling and revising that constitutes memory, is, perhaps not coincidentally, very much the process of poetry. How much of the poetry of memory relies on fact, and how much depends upon the creative imagination? Certainly, poetry often depends upon memory, but can poems also help us remember?

By looking at striking examples of poets remembering—Yusef Komunyakaa, Lucille Clifton, Gerald Stern, Ruth Stone, William Stafford, Nazim Hikmet, and others—we’ll generate and share new poems, suggest revisions of older, but not-quite-finished poems, and share practical ideas in a supportive community of writers about the relationship between poetry and memory. The goal is to navigate the space between fact and fabrication in order to say something true, maybe even beautiful, maybe even memorable. The course is open to poets at all levels of experience.

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Cecile Goding

Cecile Goding (M.F.A., The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop; M.F.A., The University of Iowa Program in Nonfiction Writing) comes from Florence, South Carolina. She has worked for adult literacy nonprofits, English departments, libraries, polyester mills, computer companies, neighborhood centers, and a Saudi Arabian prince. Her poems, essays, and short fiction appear in literary journals, books, and newspapers; on screens of all sizes; and around town.

The Perfect Lie: From Long Memory to Short Story Weeklong Workshop July 8-13

Poet and fiction writer David Huddle trusts in the power of memory. While some writers warn us to avoid writing the thinly-disguised, autobiographical story, or the confessional poem, Huddle encourages us to shape the events that shaped us. In The Writing Habit, Huddle observes: “If carving stone is more difficult than molding clay, then chipping something that really happened into a usable shape for a short story must be at least as much of an accomplishment as making something up.” I have found, as Huddle has, that by recreating the details of my own life, I get closer to the bones of a short story that is not all about me. Often, it takes the perfect lie to get at the perfect truth.

This week, we will start with mining our pasts, with the help of Huddle’s “Questionnaire for an Autobiographical Portrait.” Then, we will move from “what happened” to “what if.” Bring your journals, family photographs, and other memory tools. Manuscripts are not required. Writers at all levels of experience, and in any genre, are welcome.

Excavating the Anecdote Weekend Workshop July 21-22

Oh, we all have them: those well-trodden stories that are trotted out at reunions, at holiday dinners, after weddings and burials. The WWII memories, the “remember that day” memories, the “there-was-that- one-guy” tales—anecdotes we can’t help ourselves from telling, or hearing one more time. During this weekend, we will revisit the anecdote. We will ask questions of this form. Why that day? Why that person? We will look between the lines and underneath the humor to reflect on what these little stories can teach us.

Our readings will come from the “Readers Write” column of The Sun magazine. Good preparation may include familiarizing yourself with this portion of The Sun, which is easily available online and depends on the personal anecdote. For this retreat, at least, we will follow The Sun: “Writing style isn’t as important as thoughtfulness and sincerity.” Writers at all levels of experience, and in any genre, are most welcome.

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Diana Goetsch

Diana Goetsch is the author of three full-length volumes of poems, five prize-winning chapbooks, and “Life in Transition,” a series of 31 essays that ran in The American Scholar from 2015-16. Her work has appeared in leading journals and anthologies such as The New Yorker, Poetry, the Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize, as well as in major newspapers such as the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Grace Paley Teaching Fellowship from The New School, and the Donald Murray prize for writing pedagogy. She has taught writing at colleges, M.F.A. programs, public schools, prisons and, for seventeen years, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Extraordinary Seeing: A Workshop for All Genres Weekend Workshop July 14-15

The notion that some special insight or wisdom is required in order to start writing has short-circuited many a writer. Why even try? an internal voice whispers, You’ve got nothing profound to say. But insight is not what goes into a piece of writing—rather, it’s what comes out of it.

What goes into a piece of writing is work. Just as, when ascending a mountain, we first need to do some climbing (work) before it is possible to stop and take in the view (insight), writing needs to be worked before it can yield insight. The insight or “view” that results, which is nothing we could have begun with, has been called extraordinary seeing.

In this open-genre workshop we’ll have examples and discussion to fully understand this key facet of writing craft; but more than anything we will practice and train in how to lay the ground for extraordinary seeing.

Free-Writing Intensive: A Generative Workshop for All Genres Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

Free-writing is an essential tool, the way most writers honor the impulse to sit down and write, and the act during which that impulse either catches fire or peters out. Yet this fundamental skill is seldom taught or engaged in with very much awareness or refinement. Put another way, there are as many ways to free- write as there are to dance, but most are stuck doing the frat boy two-step, and wind up filling space on the page the same way every time, no matter the subject.

This workshop will open the vault to the theory and practice of free-writing. We will train in a series of counter-intuitive (and delightful) practices designed to liberate us from habitual patterns and self- canceling beliefs, altering the “DNA” of how we write. A great bi-product is the volume of new material we’ll generate. A healthy free-writing practice is also an antidote to “writer’s block.”

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Diana Goetsch Craft & Vision: A Poetry Workshop (continued) Weekend Workshop July 21-22

If we think of a poem as a bird, the two wings of that bird are craft and vision. (“Vision” loosely defined as a poem’s “revelation” about some facet of experience; and craft, the vehicle to deliver that revelation.) “Craft or vision?” is often the first question I ask when I see a poem faltering—a crucial question, for no refinement in craft can fix a vision problem, just as “profundity” can’t overcome faulty craft.

The emphasis in this workshop will be on the poems of participants, learning to see with new eyes (and surprising speed) what is holding them back and what could help them. Each participant will offer two poems for critique, though the goal of course is to come away with new capacities for improving all our poems.

Eric Goodman

Eric Goodman’s fifth novel, Twelfth and Race, was published in 2012 by the University of Nebraska Press Flyover Fiction series. He is the recipient of three Ohio Arts Council fellowships as well as residencies at the Headland Center for the Arts, Ragdale, and the MacDowell Colony. Goodman has also published more than 150 articles and essays, with work appearing in the LA Times Sunday Magazine, GQ, Travel & Leisure, Saveur, and several anthologies. For the past decade, Goodman has directed the creative writing program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Write Funny to Me Weekend Workshop June 23-24

This weekend workshop is designed for prose writers of all levels, scribblers of fiction or creative nonfiction who would like to learn how to be funny, or in many cases, funnier, on the page. Whether a writer’s intentions are ultimately serious or light-hearted, being able to make readers laugh is a sure way to attract and to hold their attention. If you can amuse your readers, they’ll follow you straight to the cash register. Just ask Sedaris.

This is a generative workshop, beginning with short readings and exercises. We’ll work on dialogue and distinguish between character and slapstick-based humor. You will end the weekend having learned a trick or two, perhaps even a joke. More importantly, you’ll emerge with a whetted sense of how to be funny on the page, and you’ll have fun doing it.

The Final Draft: On Finishing & Knowing When You’ve Finished Your Novel Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

This is an advanced novel writing workshop. It is designed for writers who are fairly far along or perhaps have finished a draft of a novel. Each participant will submit up to twenty pages—preferably the first twenty, but not necessarily—to be considered by the class. We will discuss, as a group, how to go from rough draft to final draft. What needs to be done? What’s the best way to do it? How do you know when you’re finished? How do you prepare your manuscript to submit to an agent or publisher? Instructor Eric Goodman has published five novels. Fifteen of his former students have published first books. This will be a completely honest, straightforward workshop designed to help you get to the next level as a writer.

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Sands Hall

Sands Hall’s recent memoir is called FLUNK. START: Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint Press). She is also the author of the novel Catching Heaven, a Random House Reader’s Circle selection; and of a book of writing essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. Her short fiction has appeared in such journals as New England Review, The Iowa Review, and Green Mountains Review. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a second M.F.A. in Theatre Arts and is a playwright and a singer/songwriter. Sands is an associate teaching professor of English and creative writing at Franklin & Marshall College. This is the twenty-sixth summer she has taught for the Festival.

Novel: The Next Draft Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

So you’ve finished your novel! Or you’re very close. Congratulations are in order, but you also know the manuscript needs at least one rewrite before it’s ready to meet the world. How do you begin that process?

During our week together we’ll examine what you’ve accomplished so far, including issues of plot and character. Then, with the help of daily assignments, we’ll focus on specific aspects of craft, including point of view and its relation to sense of place, the importance of rising tension, issues of characterization, and that vital building block, scene. While in the course of the week you may want to refer to the current draft of your novel, what you’ll write (and workshop) each day is expected to be new, incorporating ideas and insights offered by the class. Come prepared to work hard. You’ll leave with confidence and enthusiasm to head into your next draft.

Do I Really Know My Narrator? Strategies for Strengthening Point of View Weekend Workshop June 23-24

Point of view is the underlying pedal tone, the overarching melody, and the essential rhythm of any successful piece of writing. How do we go about creating that? How do we get our readers to believe—and believe in—the person telling our story? Do the author and the narrator have to be two separate entities? How can I make my narrator(s) more powerful, effective, and believable? And where does “voice” fit into this? With the help of published examples, we’ll examine various styles and strategies; short assignments, to be completed both in and out of class, will give you ways to get to know and to strengthen your narrators.

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Robin Hemley

Robin Hemley has published twelve books of fiction and nonfiction. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, three Pushcart Prizes, and the Nelson Algren Award from the Chicago Tribune. His work has been published in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, The Believer, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Paris Review Daily, Orion, The Wall Street Journal, Lapham’s Quarterly, Conjunctions, and The Sun, among others. His books include the popular texts Turning Life into Fiction and A Field Guide for Immersion Writing, as well as the anthologies Extreme Fiction (with Michael Martone) and I’ll Tell You Mine: Thirty Years of Essays from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program (with Hope Edelman). Robin directed The University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program for nine years and currently directs the Writing Program at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. He is also an associate faculty member at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.

The Frangible Memoir Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

“Frangible” has two meanings: able to be broken up into many parts and bullets that disintegrate upon impact. We’ll be approaching the memoir this week in both senses of the word—looking at memoir and memory in terms of fragmentation, writing brief snippets of memoir in a series of exercises, and creating little explosions on the page, brief bursts that suggest more than they state explicitly. This class is designed for the both poets and prose writers who are drawn less to narrative and more to suggestion and metaphor. The idea will be to create snippets of memory and observations, some a sentence in length, some a phrase, some a paragraph that, when put side by side, tell stories of the gaps and absences in our lives. As texts, we’ll be using Maggie Nelson’s Bluets and Abigail Thomas’ Safekeeping, as well as the work of Ashley Butler and others. This will be a generative workshop.

Christine Hemp

Christine Hemp has aired her work on NPR’s Morning Edition, and she has written, produced, and hosted a public radio program called The Institute of Higher Yearning which braided music, literature, art, and science. Her awards include a Harvard University Conway Award for teaching writing; a Washington State Artist Trust fellowship for literature; and an Iowa Review Award for literary nonfiction. Her collection of poems, That Fall, was chosen for the New Women’s Voices Series at Finishing Line Press. She lives with her husband and two horses in Port Townsend, Washington.

Mini-Memoirs for Podcast, Radio, and Reading Aloud Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

To write a mini-memoir is to create a moment in time. During this week you will generate a series of short pieces that stand alone and/or work collectively. Turning to the work of writers like Patti Smith, Brian Doyle, Beth Ann Fennelly, Sally Mann, and Mary Karr, we will examine how limitation can be liberating, why form is crucial, and what it means to unleash an arresting voice for a listening—as well as a reading— audience. By the end of the week you will have created your own podcast and a suite of mini-memoirs. Writers at all levels are welcome. Expect to be surprised.

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Scene vs. Reflection in Personal Narrative Weekend Workshop June 23-24

Reflection is the nonfiction writer’s gift to the reader, offering meaning to the car crash, the encounter with a heron, that afternoon flipping burgers. Therefore, it’s crucial to know when to let a scene do the work—letting the reader live in a specific moment—and when to pull back into exposition, summary, and meaning-making. Bring a rough chapter or draft of an essay, and we will generate new scenes for your memoir or essay, then weave them with reflection. All levels welcome.

Patricia Henley

Patricia Henley is the author of three novels, four collections of stories, two chapbooks of poetry, and a stage play. Her first novel, Hummingbird House, was a finalist for the National Book Award and The New Yorker Fiction Prize. Her first collection of stories, Friday Night at Silver Star, won the Montana First Book Award. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Circle of Women, The Last Best Place, and other anthologies. Engine Books published her most recent collection of stories, Other Heartbreaks. Her play “If I Hold My Tongue” premiered in September 2015, as part of the DC Women’s Voices Theater Festival. She is currently at work on a novel set in New Orleans, Shout, Sister, Shout. For 26 years she taught in the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at Purdue University. She lives in Frostburg, Maryland.

Kickstart Your First YA Novel Weeklong Workshop July 8-13

“…I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers.” —Sherman Alexie

Do you remember what it felt like to be a teenager? Do you have an idea for a YA novel that will not let go of you? This workshop is for beginning YA novelists who need a safe space to explore ideas and solicit feedback about story lines, suspense, characters, structure, inciting events, and setting. You will be assigned to read and come prepared to discuss at least two out of the following four YA novels—The Hate You Give (Angie Thomas), The Fault in Our Stars (John Greene), Eleanor and Park (Rainbow Rowell), and Bone Gap (Laura Ruby). We will ask why these novels are memorable and peek behind the curtain to discern what strategies the writers chose and how to employ those strategies in your own work. We will write or brainstorm every day, and you will receive gentle feedback. I prefer gentle feedback at the start of a novel—harsh critiques can sometimes cut short the creative process at the beginning. You will return home with your opening scene, deep character studies, and a sense of structure—the rough three acts of your YA novel.

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Jim Heynen

Jim Heynen is best known for his short-short stories (The Man Who Kept Cigars in His Cap, Graywolf Press; You Know What is Right, North Point Press; The One-room Schoolhouse, Knopf; The Boys’ House, Minnesota Historical Society Press; and Ordinary Sins, Milkweed Editions). Many of these stories have been read on NPR’s All Things Considered, and Minnesota astronaut George Pinky Nelson took a recording of Heynen’s stories for bedtime listening on his last space mission.

Heynen has also published three novels (The Fall of Alice K., Milkweed Editions; Cosmos Coyote and William the Nice, YA, Henry Holt; and Being Youngest, YA, Henry Holt) and several collections of poetry, including A Suitable Church, Copper Canyon Press and Standing Naked: New and Selected Poems, Confluence Press. He wrote prose vignettes for two photography books published by the University of Iowa Press, Harker’s Barns and Sunday Afternoon on the Porch. His major nonfiction book, One Hundred Over 100, Fulcrum Publishers, featured 100 American centenarians. For many years he was Writer-in-Residence at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in both poetry and fiction.

Writing Emotions Weekend Workshop June 23-24

In this workshop, we’ll confront the challenge of writing emotional scenes—or emotional moments— whether they are in fiction, nonfiction or poetry. We’ll practice bitter anger, ecstatic happiness, heart- wrenching sadness, and even hair-raising fear or horror. We’ll look at some successfully written emotional moments in published literature to see what makes them work. We’ll also look at a few clunkers to see why some attempts at writing emotions don’t work. We might even use the strategy of writing a few fake emotional scenes to warm up! The goal will be for you to write some prize-winning emotionally charged moments in whatever form you choose. Our time will include in-class handouts and both in- and out-of- class generative writing exercises. This class is open to all levels of writing experience.

From Memory to Art Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

This workshop will begin with life experience, but we’ll use what we remember as a springboard for imaginative verbal adventures. The moment we give our attention to form, whether that be in the music and repetition we associate with poetry or the structure and narrative progression we associate with fiction, what we thought was only a memory can take on new and unexpected life. We’ll use the writing process itself to discover what in our experience is calling for our attention as writers, and we’ll explore ways of seeing how memory can feed the imagination rather than limit it. This workshop is especially suited for those who like to write in short forms, but we’ll try different approaches to our subjects so that everyone will be able to find an avenue that leads in the most rewarding direction. The course will include in-class handouts and both in-class and out-of-class writing exercises. Open to all levels of writing experience.

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Charles Holdefer

Charles Holdefer (M.F.A., The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop; Ph.D., Sorbonne) is the author of Dick Cheney in Shorts (stories, 2017) and Bookmarked: George Saunders’ Pastoralia (nonfiction, 2018), as well as four novels including The Contractor (2007), which was an American Booksellers Association “Book Sense Pick.” This novel has been translated into several languages. His short fiction won a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in the New England Review, North American Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Slice and elsewhere. He also writes essays and reviews for New York Journal of Books, Entropy, Dactyl Review, and The Collagist. He teaches at the University of Poitiers, France. Visit him online at www. charlesholdefer.com.

“Who’s Talkin’ Here?”: Dialogue vs. Narration in Prose Fiction Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

No matter what kind of story you’re telling, narration and dialogue will do the heavy lifting. But how do you find the right balance?

This is a nuts-and-bolts craft workshop that welcomes fiction writers of all levels. We’ll look at brief samples from contemporary writers (Zadie Smith, George Saunders, et al.) and will do several writing exercises that will allow participants to generate new text or to experiment with their own work-in- progress. Each writer will also be invited to workshop a short story or novel excerpt.

We’ll consider questions like dialogue tags, dialect, idiolect, profanity (yes, swearing is an artful activity!), and slang. We’ll also explore when to give your characters a rest and let your narrator do the talking. The common saying, “Show don’t tell” isn’t always true, but this fact begs the questions: How do I show? When do I tell? We’ll look at options of external narration and internal narration of characters’ actions and thoughts. Writers will leave this workshop with a keener appreciation of the tools at their disposal and how they might serve their story.

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Wayne Johnson

Wayne Johnson (M.F.A., Iowa Writer’s Workshop) is the author of nine books: five novels, a collection of stories, a memoir, and two nonfiction works. Three of his books have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, two have been New York Times Notable Books of the Year, one a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers Series and finalist for Book of the Year, and another a Kansas City Star Book of the Year. His awards include a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford, a Yaddo residency, and a Chesterfield Writers’ Film Project Fellowship. Wayne has worked in Hollywood, where two of his screenplays were optioned, and two of his most recent screenplays were selected as Sundance Best Picture finalists. Wayne has new books forthcoming and in development. Visit him online at www.waynejohnsonauthor.com.

Telling the Tale: A Nonfiction Workshop Weekend Workshop July 14-15

All of us encounter dramas in life that seem tailor-made for narrative. But when sitting down to pen such seeming “ready-mades,” we often find that they don’t come to life, drag, or simply seem to lose their once- brilliant shine when committed to paper. So, we ask, how do writers such as Bill Bryson, Jon Krakauer, and Sebastian Junger write such engaging narratives? Or Tobias Wolff, Mary Karr, and Jeannette Walls? This class will examine a variety of nonfiction forms, from the memoir to the specific-subject yarn drawn from a decades-old once-hot news item. We’ll discuss the two major necessities of writing nonfiction, compression and conflation, and how to use both with integrity and confidence, along with a host of powerful techniques drawn from fiction. Participants will write and share with the class a variety of exercises that develop core craft for the nonfiction narrative. By the end of the class, all members will see the world of story in a fresh and inviting way, and that the story is in the telling.

Novel Solutions Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

You’ve been working on this thing for...how long? Months? Years? It’s supposed to look like a novel, but now that you’ve got it in front of you, it looks more like a six-legged cow or a bus with wings. You’ve begun to wonder what, exactly, a “novel” is. Maybe you’re not writing one. You might be writing a cycle- of-stories-as-novel, or a faux memoir, or a “modular” novel with some unifying structural element. In this class, we’ll look at ways of structuring novel-length narratives to create a variety of fully-engaging, satisfying works. We’ll examine traditional plot structures, as well as a host of others, using examples from contemporary literature. We’ll address pacing, psychic distance, aspects of “voice,” and more. Participants will not bring novels to class; rather, they will bring an opening chapter, or a middle chapter, or even notes or notions. We’ll consider the possibilities. Always, the structural solution for the most compelling rendering of the story will be novel to the writer, will fit his or her narrative impulses.

36 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Jeremy B. Jones

Jeremy B. Jones is the author of Bearwallow: A Personal History of a Mountain Homeland, which was awarded the 2014 Appalachian Book of the Year in nonfiction and a gold medal in the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards for memoir. His essays appear in Oxford American, Brevity, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Jeremy serves as an associate professor of English at Western Carolina University and the series co-editor of In Place, a literary nonfiction book series from Vandalia Press.

From Family History to Literary Nonfiction Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

Likely we’ve all sat through relatives’ long-winding journeys through photo albums full of long-forgotten second cousins; we all have our own quirky great uncles and larger-than-life forefathers; we’ve all heard of the romance of Granddaddy and Mamaw, of the old homeplaces full of closets of skeletons. But how does one take these passed-around stories and move them beyond family reunions? How do we, as writers, determine what is the stuff of artful literary nonfiction and what is best relegated to family history? In short, how do we make readers care about these intimate and erstwhile bits of our pasts? In this workshop, we’ll examine nonfiction that successfully carries family history to general readers while we begin our own essays and book chapters that explore our family stories. Writers don’t necessarily need to have planned projects (we will write exercises and short essays together); they simply need families. Dysfunction helps.

Writing about Nowhere Weekend Workshop July 21-22

This course will examine the rich tradition of nonfiction writing about place; however, it will immediately detour onto the road less traveled. We don’t all have stories of Paris or Kilimanjaro. Some of us care about Paducah or desolate prairies. What does a writer need to capture the tiny towns and empty spaces, the everyday Main Streets and failing factories to create engaging, layered essays that reach far-flung readers? By exploring useful gazes, forms, and examples, we will write about the places we have: the tiny Caribbean town you backpacked through, the barbershop your grandfather visited every Monday morning, the junkyard full of feral cats just down the street. We will also discuss journals and magazines interested in this writing about the common place. I will give a prompt in advance of the weekend for you to share in workshop when we meet in Iowa City.

37 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Daniel Khalastchi

Daniel Khalastchi is the author of two books of poetry, Manoleria (Tupelo Press, 2011) and Tradition (McSweeney’s, 2015). A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, his work has recently appeared in a variety of publications, including The Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, Poetry Northwest, and The Rumpus. He is the co-founder and managing editor of Rescue Press, and he lives in Iowa City where he directs the Frank N. Magid Center for Undergraduate Writing at the University of Iowa.

Betting on the Muse: A Poetry Workshop Weekend Workshop June 16-17

I usually lose at poker. Part of this is because I’m no good with numbers. The other part is because it’s scary to take risks; it’s much easier to bet on a sure thing, and avoid the patience it takes to sit and study the game. While gambling and poetry have their obvious differences, the same fears/reservations that might keep us away from casinos can limit us severely as writers. By worrying too much about readers, style, or if/how poems reflect back on us as creators, we may prevent ourselves from exploring all the avenues the blank page has to offer. In this workshop, we will expand our poetic abilities by (as Bukowski says) betting it all on the muse. Through analysis of poems by James Wright, John Berryman, Gertrude Stein, and Emily Dickinson, among others, we will examine what it means to successfully take chances on the page (emotional, thematic, formal) and work on implementing those ideas in our own writing via in- class exercises and workshops. Poets at all levels who are interested in generating work that pushes them in new directions are encouraged to join us.

The New You: Revising, Editing, and Recharging Your Poems Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

The act of writing a poem is a curious expedition. We start with a blank page—a shimmering neutral canvas laid out before us like an undiscovered country—and we slowly begin to track the rivers and valleys of our unique artistic exploration. Though we hope to end up with a map we are satisfied with, as creative cartographers we must remember an element crucial to perceived and self-appointed boundaries: there are often other ways to see them. This idea of reshaping and redrafting the borders we place around our work will guide our week together. By examining poetry that pushes against tradition (thematically, structurally, and syntactically), we will learn new ways of traversing what is possible on the page and become more successful pioneers of our own poetic landscapes. Readings will include work by Rae Armantrout, C.A. Conrad, James Galvin, Tyehimba Jess, Sabrina Orah Mark, D.A. Powell, Claudia Rankine, Solmaz Sharif, C.D. Wright, and others. Though this class is open to poets of all skill levels, I ask that you arrive in Iowa City with at least one previously written poem which will be workshopped and radically revised by the end of the week.

38 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Sabrina Orah Mark

Sabrina Orah Mark is the author of the book-length poetry collections The Babies and Tsim Tsum. Her collection of stories, Wild Milk, will be published by Dorothy in 2018. She earned an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Mark’s awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She has taught at Agnes Scott College, University of Georgia, Rutgers University, University of Iowa, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Goldwater Hospital and throughout the New York City and Iowa Public School Systems. She lives in Athens Georgia with her husband, Reginald McKnight, and their two sons.

Obsession: A Poetry Workshop Weekend Workshop June 16-17

In this workshop, you will write the living daylights out of that thing that writes the living daylights out of you. What, like a fixed star, is at the center of your heart? What is your hobbyhorse, your idée fixe, your charge? What hangs you up and infatuates? Writing and reading assignments will guide you into your obsession so that you become more fluent in the parts of its landscape that mystify you. As a point of entry into this two-day workshop, begin to consider what keeps you. Is it something like god, or a birthmark, or an old love, or someone famous, or snow, or crying? We will consider how poems get built up out of obsession and why. We will read poems by Oni Buchanan, Lucie Brock-Broido, Layli Long Soldier, Joshua Bell, Kaveh Akbar, Ross Gay, and Rachel Zucker. Bring your shovels. We’re going to go deep.

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Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Jacqueline Briggs Martin is the author of twenty-one picture books for children, including the Caldecott- Award-winning Snowflake Bentley. She is the author of two 2017 picture books—Creekfinding (University of Minnesota Press, illus. by Claudia McGehee) and Roy Choi and the Street Food Re-mix (Readers to Eaters; co-authored with June Jo Lee, illus. by Man One). Martin is on the faculty of Hamline University’s M.F.A. in Writing for Children and Young Adults Program.

Catching Our Own White Cows: Magic & Mystery in Children’s Picture Books Weekend Workshop July 14-15 (with Sarah Sadie Busse)

Coincidence? Mystery? Magic? How does the white cow get away in Tres Seymour’s Hunting the White Cow? How does the crayon in Harold’s Purple Crayon come to have special powers? Some books leave us with questions, leave us wondering. And often those are the books we best remember, the ones readers of all ages think about and talk about again and again.

In this workshop for picture book writers of all levels, we will consider how to bring the uncanny, the inexplicable, into our writing and yet tell a satisfying story. We will talk about how to create stories that leave the reader pondering a bit of unexplained “magic.” Not the magic of wands and fairy godmothers, but of small surprises and powerful coincidences. Charles DeLint writes, “When you are touched by magic, nothing’s ever quite the same again.” How do we set the stage for that magic, that wonder, in our story? How do we balance it with the story’s reality?

Plan to bring your picture book manuscript or 2-5 pages of poetry (800 words or fewer) to our workshop. We will discuss ways these pieces can be strengthened, perhaps with a touch of the magical or mysterious. Our emphasis this weekend will be on process, as we learn, through critique and conversation, how to strengthen our stories and our poems. We hope also to generate some new writing during our time together through exercises and free-writing.

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Malinda McCollum

Malinda McCollum is the author of The Surprising Place, winner of the 2017 Juniper Prize in Fiction. Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Zyzzyva, and Epoch, and been anthologized in The Paris Review Book of People with Problems and The Worst Years of Your Life.

McCollum has received the Plimpton Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. She’s a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught at The University of Iowa, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford. She currently lives in Charleston, SC, where she teaches writing at the College of Charleston.

Extra/Ordinary: Merging the Real and Surreal in Fiction Weekend Workshop July 21-22

In this weekend workshop, we’ll read and write fiction that breaches the parameters of strict realism by incorporating elements of the supernatural, the shocking, and the absurd. We’ll consider the effect of using “strangeness” to draw readers in, disarm them, and reset their expectations, with the ultimate goal of more brightly illuminating the “real” conflicts we wish to explore.

On Saturday, we’ll look at published stories influenced by sci fi, fantasy, and horror, and consider the long reach of the traditional fairy tale. We’ll also do a series of writing exercises that ask you to employ exaggeration, invention, and satire. Overnight, writers will choose one exercise to develop and revise, and on the second day of class, we’ll workshop the expanded exercises. Our aim is to experiment with a variety of surreal or unexpected narrative elements, taking care not to overshadow the nuances of our stories, but to enhance the examination of our characters’ lives instead. How do we make the extraordinary feel ordinary? And make the ordinary feel extraordinary as well?

This generative workshop is open to story writers and novelists at all levels of experience.

Five-Day MFA: Fiction Writing Workshop Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

Writing can be a solitary and frustrating endeavor. It’s one reason many writers enroll in M.F.A. creative writing programs: to be part of a vibrant literary scene. Of course, not everyone can drop everything to pursue a multi-year M.F.A. With that in mind, this workshop is designed to give you a concentrated version of the close reading and community you might find in a creative writing graduate program. We’ll engage in intense, extended discussions of each writer’s story (or novel chapter), offering thorough and thoughtful feedback as a way of challenging each other and ourselves. We’ll also do short readings and generative writing exercises throughout the week, based on the pieces class members submit. By the end of our workshop, you’ll have made connections with fellow writers that may continue beyond your time in Iowa.

This workshop is open to short story writers and novelists at all levels of experience.

41 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

James McKean

James McKean (M.F.A., The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop; Ph.D., The University of Iowa) writes nonfiction and poetry. His poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, and Poetry Northwest among others, and have been featured in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. His nonfiction has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Gray’s Sporting Journal, The Gettysburg Review, and The Iowa Review, and his essays have been reprinted in The Best American Sports Writing 2003 and the 2006 Pushcart Prize anthology. He has published three books of poems, Headlong (1987), Tree of Heaven (1995) and We Are the Bus (2011), and a book of essays, Home Stand: Growing Up in Sports (2005). A new collection of essays, Bound, is forthcoming this year from Truman State University Press. A Professor Emeritus at Mount Mercy University, he still teaches for the Queens University low-residency M.F.A. program, the Tinker Mountain Writers’ Workshop and, most recently, as a visiting professor in The University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program.

The Shape of Time in Memoir Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

In his The Art of Time in Memoir, Sven Birkerts writes, “The manipulation of the double vantage point is the memoirist’s single most powerful and adaptable technique.” Our workshop will emphasize the “then” and “now” of this double vantage point, focusing on how writing a memoir begins with a compilation of many pieces—research material or anecdotes or stepping-stones or moments held in memory. Designed for those who are sketching out these moments, this workshop will consider ways to “fashion a text,” as Annie Dillard says, by looking back at “fragmentary patches of color and feeling” from a “now” vantage point to discover what different kind of sense these past events make over time. We will also read a few short nonfiction examples to see how they employ a “double vantage point.” But the majority of the workshop will be given to reading your work by an informed and sympathetic audience. Plan to bring two short pieces of your work in progress, a variety of questions, and a curiosity about how all this is accomplished.

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June Melby

June Melby is the author of My Family and Other Hazards (Henry Holt & Co., 2014), a memoir about a retro 1950s miniature golf course that her family ran for 30 years. It was a New York Times Best Seller and won the Midwest Connections Award. A former standup comedian and performance poet, her work has appeared in Muse/A Journal, Forklift Ohio, Fugue, The Utne Reader, Water~Stone Review, Versal, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, National Lampoon Magazine, and the LA Weekly, among others. As a spoken-word artist she has performed in major cities throughout the U.S. and Europe. She received an M.F.A. from The University of Iowa, and currently lives in the woods with her husband and a twenty-pound cat named Ferdinand Magellan.

A Hedonistic Week of Creative Indulgence (for Your Muse) Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

You’ve finally carved out some time in your life to write. You have great ideas, maybe even a new computer. But when you sit down to write, your muse refuses to speak. Or worse, the muse gets you started, and then disappears for weeks at a time. Should you give up? Move on to a different project? Are you just not talented enough? Or is there some way to coax your muse back?

This course will be a fun mix of creative exercises, mini-lectures, and discussion, all aimed at pampering your muse. We will study the habits of great authors and the feeling of being “in the zone”—those rare and delicious moments when words magically seem to flow. Most importantly, we’ll experiment with ways to get you in the zone more often. Topics will include writer’s block, starting new work, dealing with roadblocks, and bringing your most creative self to your writing time. You will get the chance to share brand new writing with your classmates. The exercises might turn into the beginnings of stories or essays, or overlap with projects you have in the works. We will have fun, and entice our muses back on the job.

43 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Gordon Mennenga

Gordon Mennenga (M.F.A., The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop) grew up in Reinbeck, Iowa and has taught creative writing, literature, and film studies at DePauw University, Oregon State University, and Coe College. He has given readings and workshops in Tennessee, Oregon, Indiana and Iowa. His fiction has appeared in The North American Review, Northwest Magazine, Folio, and other magazines. Gordon has written for Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion and NPR’s Good Evening. He was the recipient of a Nelson Algren Award for Fiction, and his monologue “Shaky Town” was included in the Riverside Theatre’s Walking the Wire show. Gordon’s work as an editor has produced 12 published novels and one memoir. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Writing Wild: Exercises in Fictional Voice Weekend Workshop July 14-15

What do Thomas Pierce, Lorrie Moore, Junot Diaz, Raymond Carver, ZZ Packer, and Haruki Murakami have in common? The answer is voice, that certain wild energy readers crave. You can read the first page of a story or novel by any of these writers and know without a doubt who wrote it. The idea of voice is a mysterious combination of writer and character. Voice is the sound of the storyteller; it’s what is in the air and on the page, a combination of speech rhythms, diction, attitude and perception. Barry Hannah said that “of all the qualities, voice is the most unteachable and the closest to magic, a sort of natural music in the head.” This workshop will focus on a number of short exercises written over the weekend to better define voice and encourage writers to locate the unexplored “natural music” of their own voice. We’ll let you know what we hear and suggest ways to shape your voice. Writing that sounds flat or bland or unfocused often lacks a distinctive feature. If you’ve read your fiction aloud, you have some idea of how you sound, of how your characters sound, and of how maintaining that voice can hold a story together. We’ll invent voices and let them loose: ragged voices, calm voices, charming voices, distant voices, nurse voices, cowboy voices, burglar voices, bold voices, smart voices, foolish voices—and your voice. What an amazing motley chorus we’ll make!

The Blank Page Weekend Workshop July 21-22

This workshop will examine ways to face the blank page, the blank screen, the place where psychology meets art. We will discuss the psychological aspects of starting a story, a novel, a poem or an essay. (I presume that painters, sculptors and composers all face some version of the blank page.) Many writers speak of what “triggered” their writing, what people, places or things attracted their attention—and why. Was it a waitress in Albuquerque, a tour guide in Thailand, a moment of heartbreak in Nebraska, a suitcase left in a parking lot, Aunt Carol and her box of secrets? We’ll write a series of exercises that will help fill in the blank page and offer the opportunity for discovery and resolve. Our goal will be to be better informed about ourselves as storytellers and to practice what we discover. This workshop is open to writers of all genres.

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Decisions, Decisions: Your Novel’s First Chapters Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

Think of your favorite contemporary novel: Cloud Atlas, Dept. of Speculation, The Tiger’s Wife, The Truth About Celia, Vanishing Point, The Orchardist. Think of how that novel might have started: a dream, a memory, an image, a crisis, a letter, an obsession, a scrap of gossip. No doubt the novelist did a lot of pacing or smoking or eating or praying or crying or laughing or planning or cutting and pasting. But the words got on the page; they added up to a narrative that made sense and carried the reader into a new world. The novelist started out, got lost, found a way out, doubled back, asked for directions, moved on—and somehow arrived at THE END. This workshop will concentrate on the first words, sentences, pages and chapters of your novel. We will discuss a number of first pages from successful novels. Each workshop participant will be expected to bring the first chapter(s) (fifteen pages is plenty) of a (however humble) novel-in-progress. We’ll revise and discover. Our discussion will focus on the beginnings of things: character, voice and action, when and where to revise, how and what to plan, how to get inside of the story and live the life of the novel. This workshop is about diving into the deep water of a novel and is open to fiction writers at all levels of experience.

Paula Morris

Born in New Zealand, fiction writer and essayist Paula Morris (www.paula-morris.com) is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has taught creative writing at universities in three countries, and now convenes the Masters programme at the University of Auckland. Her work includes the story and essay collection False River (Penguin 2017) and the novel Rangatira (Penguin 2011), which won the fiction categories of the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards and the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards. Her four YA novels are supernatural mysteries, published by Scholastic, and have sold over 400,000 copies.

Novel Manuscript Workshop Two-Week Intensive Workshop July 8-20

Admission to this workshop is by application only. Enrollment is limited to ten. To apply, submit twenty pages of your novel, a two-page synopsis, and a personal statement that explains what you hope to get from the workshop. All of these items—your novel excerpt, synopsis and personal statement—*must* be double-spaced and in 12-point type.

The deadline to apply is April 19. See Registration Information, page 73, for further details specific to Two-Week Intensive Workshops.

This class is for novelists, whatever the genre—realist, comedic, fantasy, historical, crime, or speculative. Our focus these two weeks is the art and craft of writing fiction. Each writer in the group is an individual artist writing a unique book, and workshops will address the issues and demands specific to each novel under discussion.

In this intensive session, we will workshop novel manuscripts between 35,000-75,000 words (c. 115- 250 pages, based on 300 words per page). Ideally you’ve completed a full draft of your novel, or you have a substantial “working” manuscript in progress. Seminar portions of the class explore aspects of

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Paula Morris technique in depth and in detail: point of view, narrative structure, the emotional and dramatic moment (continued) within scenes, texture and clarity in setting and characterization, the fundamentals of dialogue, and the possibilities of language.

Members of this workshop should be committed to the citizenship of this particular course. Manuscripts will be circulated and read in advance of our meeting in Iowa City. Writers are responsible for careful reading of each other’s manuscripts and giving extensive and considered feedback.

Useful preparation: Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer.

Michael Morse

Michael Morse teaches at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York and has taught at The University of Iowa and The New School. His first book, Void and Compensation, was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He has published poems in various journals—including A Public Space, The American Poetry Review, Field, The Iowa Review, and Ploughshares—and in anthologies that include The Best American Poetry 2012 and Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days. Honors include fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. He received his M.F.A. in Poetry from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is a poetry editor for The Literary Review.

From Either/Or to More: Giving Poems Texture and Layered Complexity Weekend Workshop June 23-24

Black or White? Nature or Nurture? Paper or Plastic? Raw or Cooked? Mind or Body? Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? So much in our daily lives—and in our writing practice—is presented to us in easy binaries. And yet these seemingly confining binaries are useful springboards into more complex thinking and feeling in our poems. In this generative workshop for intermediate to advanced poets, we’ll begin each session with a particular dichotomy as springboard (e.g., work vs. home; caretaking vs. independence; praise vs. lament; innocence vs. experience) and explore how our work—in content and structure— might blossom into complexity. We’ll also contemplate how different formal approaches and revision techniques can create varied richness in our work.

Echo, Letter, Text, Tweet: Poems as Correspondence Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

Poems might begin in isolation, but we put them out into the world hoping for connection—a making and creation towards others, a message in a bottle that might wash ashore and affect the hearts and minds of finders and keepers (perhaps our first form of social media). How can a diverse range of work (from poets including Herbert, Donne, Yeats, Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Miguel Hernandez, Larry Levis, Tyehimba Jess, Tracy K. Smith, Monica Youn, Morgan Parker and others) help us to inhabit our contemporary situations and address distant listeners, practitioners, and even poems as models of inspiration or protest? This lively and invigorating generative workshop features daily reading and writing exercises to help you create a series of poems that foreground connection over time and distance.

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Marc Nieson

Marc Nieson is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and NYU Film School. His background includes children’s theatre, cattle chores, and a season with a one-ring circus. His memoir, Schoolhouse: Lessons on Love & Landscape, came out from Ice Cube Press in 2016. He’s won a Raymond Carver Short Story Award, Pushcart Prize nominations, and been noted in Best American Essays. He teaches at Chatham University, edits The Fourth River, and is at work on a new novel, Houdini’s Heirs. More at www.marcnieson.com.

The Art of Metaphor Weekend Workshop June 16-17

From Melville’s white whale to Walker’s color purple. Cervantes’ windmills to Woolf’s lighthouse. Carver’s cathedral to Basho’s pond. Frost’s forked path to Naipaul’s river bend. We all recognize the precision and poignancy of these metaphors. Those crystalline choices their creators made to deeply and simultaneously etch into our minds both image and meaning.

As writers, how can we bring that kind of consciousness into the ongoing process of our own work? How can we make a single image signify and sing throughout our narratives, poems, essays? How can we start recognizing potential metaphors in both our working drafts and our everyday lives? Through varied exercises and readings, this weekend intensive offers a vibrant study and practice of this often overlooked though highly resonant element of our craft. We’ll generate scads of new material and capitalize on the opportunity to share and receive some immediate feedback. This class is open to and will prove useful for writers of all genres.

Memoir: On Self & Society Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

We all have stories inside of us. Stories to tell, to share. In fact, one might argue that we are stories— creating our lives, day to day, every day. One of today’s most exciting writing forms—the personal memoir— is swiftly becoming the narrative option and publishing entry for many writers willing to embark on journeys of self.

Yet for a memoir to speak with any resonance or relevance, the writer must achieve a fragile balance between the self and others, between content and form. In this workshop, we will look at each manuscript from the standpoint of localizing what in your individual tale has a communal and cultural context. Then we’ll explore the varied narrative means and structures available to us to best convey that tale.

We’ll also consider such questions as: What precisely is the difference between a reflective and narrative voice? Between fact and truth? Between the private and the public? Expect model readings, discussions, and varied written exercises designed to help tap and shape your own life stories. The class invites writers working on book-length memoirs and/or individual essays.

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Marc Nieson The Art of Place (continued) Weekend Workshop June 23-24

While some writers might aspire to create “timeless” work, you never hear of anyone trying to make their writing “placeless.” Why is that? Without place, are one’s characters and ideas rootless and liable to tip over? What role does setting play beyond mere backdrop or window dressing to truly ground one’s stories or essays or memoir? Is place-based writing regional, or communal?

In this weekend, we’ll carefully look at how the rendering of place is working to help your writing establish narrative voice, credibility and point of view. How might the physical choices you’re making on the surface better encompass your subterranean intentions? And in turn, what might locale reveal about the compass of each writer’s character and orientations? Where are your most resonant places in the world? From where should you be writing?

“When we commit to a particular place,” writes Terry Tempest Williams, “a certain element of choice is removed. We are free to dig in and allow ourselves to be mentored by the life around us. We begin to see the world whole instead of fractured. Long-term strategies replace short-term gains. Routine opens the door to creativity.”

Expect a retreat into what makes for depth and sustainability on the page. Saturday will focus on theory (models and exercises), Sunday on practice (group workshopping). The class is open to and will prove useful for any prose writer.

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Jude Nutter

Jude Nutter was born in North Yorkshire, England, and grew up near Hannover, in northern Germany. Her poems have appeared in numerous national and international journals and have received over forty awards and grants. Her first collection, Pictures of the Afterlife (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), winner of the Irish Listowel Prize, was published in 2002. The Curator of Silence (University of Notre Dame Press), her second collection, won the Ernest Sandeen Prize from the University of Notre Dame and was awarded the 2007 Minnesota Book Award in poetry. A third collection, I Wish I Had a Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman (University of Notre Dame Press), was awarded the 2010 Minnesota Book Award in poetry and voted Poetry Book of the Year by ForeWord Review. In 2004-2005 Jude spent two months in Antarctica as part of the National Science Foundation’s Writers and Artists Program.

Pace Yourself: The Ways a Poem Moves Weekend Workshop July 14-15

Poetic pacing is a delicate balance between anticipation and knowledge: poems should create in us a desire to know, a desire to discover, and yet keep us, as Stephen Dobyns states, “on the verge of understanding.” Pacing, then, is a kind of promise, and also a kind of tension, and it often begins with the poem’s title and first line. In this workshop, we will look at a variety of poems by master poets and explore how pacing—and hence the journey of discovery the poem enacts—is controlled. We will look at various kinds of sentence structure and their relationships to the poetic line. We will look at the function of meter, rhythm, long/short vowels and consonant use; at diction, and at the role of secondary information that is carried and held within complex sentences. A variety of prompts will enable you to generate new material, and you will be encouraged to experiment with various ways of pacing this material, making choices about which pacing best carries and “unfolds” the poem. Suitable for those with a basic knowledge of poetic technique, this workshop is a mix of reading, discussion, writing, and workshopping. Work/poems critiqued can be poems already underway, new poems generated in class, or both.

The Freedom of Restraint: The Joy and Paradox of Formal Poetry Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

Judith Barrington once said that her best work emerged “from between the scaffolding of a known form.” This is the joy and paradox of writing in form: the formal poem’s “rules” provide a safe framework and often force us to write things we couldn’t have written without the form’s parameters. Forms, both open and closed, both free verse and metrical, can be used as “vessels” to contain difficult material; and in order to meet the demands of the form, we often find ourselves using grammar and syntax in new ways—we are forced to work toward extreme compression, to handle rhyme and repetition, and to think deeply about the interplay and sequencing of images. In this class, suitable for poets of all levels, we’ll discuss and experiment with some of the traditional forms that are part of our inheritance: the ghazal, the villanelle, the sonnet, the shadowbox, the ode, the sestina, the cento, the elegy, the list and the litany, and accentual/ Anglo-Saxon verse. We will also look at the different music and tone created by our four most common meters. The workshop will be a mix of reading, discussion, writing and sharing/workshopping of work. Work/poems critiqued can be poems already underway, new poems generated in class, or both.

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Beau O’Reilly

Beau O’Reilly is co-curator of the Rhinoceros Theater Festival, a frequent contributor to This American Life, and a professor of playwriting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a founding member of the Curious Theater Branch (now in its 29th year), the Crooked Mouth band, and the humbly legendary Maestro Subgum & the Whole. The author of over 90 original plays, O’Reilly is also a working actor. In 2016, his play One Boppa: Two Acts was produced; he released a third album with the Crooked Mouth, loveloveloveloveSTOPlovelovelove on Uvulittle Records; and a short story was included in the compilation Chicagoese. A new play, Last Week, premiered in January 2017, and his play Tattered and Wincing was produced that year in May. O’Reilly has produced, curated, and directed work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Poetry Foundation, Steppenwolf Studio, and Links Hall, and he has been named one of Chicago theaters’ “most influential” a half-dozen times over the course of his career.

Monologue in the Moment Weekend Workshop July 21-22

This is a workshop to be enjoyed standing up. Using techniques borrowed from Viola Spolin’s Theater Games and NPR’s This American Life, we will tell stories out of our dreams, our fears, our family histories, out of happenstance. We will examine the effects surprise, freshness, and challenge have on our writing. We’ll also talk about the how and why of documenting the work we make, answering these questions and more: When we create using improvisation, how do we transcribe or recreate the work? When we write for the page, how do we edit for live readings? We’ll generate all-new pages in our weekend together. Writers of all levels are welcome.

Lon Otto

Lon Otto (Ph.D., Indiana University) published his third collection of stories in fall 2015—A Man in Trouble, from Brighthorse Books. His previously published books are A Nest of Hooks (University of Iowa Press), winner of the Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction; Cover Me (Coffee House Press); and the craft e-book Grit: Bringing Physical Reality into Imaginative Writing (Writers Workshop Press). His writing in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry appears in many anthologies, including The Pushcart Prize (Pushcart Press), American Fiction (New Rivers Press), Flash Fiction and Flash Fiction Forward (W.W. Norton), Townships (University of Iowa Press), and Not Normal, Illinois (Indiana University Press), and in the craft text Best Words, Best Order (St. Martin’s Press). Several of his stories have been broadcast on NPR’s Selected Shorts. He is professor emeritus at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he taught literature and writing for many years.

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Writing in Layers: Fiction, Narrative Nonfiction, and Poetry Weekend Workshop June 16–17

One of the most effective ways of developing a story, poem, or essay is to work in layers of different narrative or thematic material. When the layers come from different realms of experience or thought (such as history, folk tales, work, religion, science, food, art, childhood memories), or when they carry different emotional charges, they complicate each other in unexpected ways. Things that were maybe flat and predictable before get interesting, and the writing achieves depth and originality and the rich intensity of our most powerful experiences. This workshop is focused on using techniques of layering to bring that kind of power and richness to your own writing. Through reading and discussing published works that involve multiple layers of material, through the creation and use of a very particular kind of writer’s notebook, and through exercises drawing on that notebook and current work in progress, you will produce new writing, strengthen writing you already have in draft form, share and discuss the results of those writing exercises, and develop techniques to make yourself a stronger, more interesting writer.

Storyteller’s Tools: Techniques Essential to Fiction and Narrative Nonfiction Weeklong Workshop June 17–22

Whether writing fiction or narrative nonfiction, you bring to the workbench a wealth of resources—your life experience, reading, language, personality, and imagination. This workshop focuses on writing tools necessary for transforming those resources into either fiction or a nonfiction narrative such as memoir or literary journalism. The cross-over of these techniques between fiction and nonfiction will be a prevailing theme as we examine strong examples in published writing. The primary tools we’ll explore will include setting, character, dialogue, point of view, voice, and structure. We will discuss the specific goals of a writing project you are contemplating or currently working on, and we will consider ways in which you can use essential storytelling techniques to achieve them. You will do exercises applying these writing tools to portions of your project, practicing on a small scale the approaches that will be useful throughout the larger work. The reading and exercises, our individual conversations, and the workshop discussions of new writing produced during the class will help to create an engaging, distinctive, successful work out of materials that are uniquely your own. The course is intended for writers relatively new to narrative writing or looking for a deeper, more practical understanding of fundamental storytelling techniques.

Everyone Is Strange: Developing Characters in Fiction & Narrative Nonfiction Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

Characterization—creating believable and interesting people on the page—is an absolutely essential part of successful fiction writing, and it is equally important to narrative nonfiction forms such as memoir or literary journalism. It is also one of the most complex elements of craft, with many different means of achieving it and quite a few ways in which it can fall short. In this weeklong workshop we will examine a variety of successfully realized characters in published fiction and narrative nonfiction, exploring how the authors managed to bring them so richly and intensely and memorably to life. We will place particular emphasis on discovering the uniqueness of a character, whether imagined or drawn directly from life, the individual’s “strangeness,” the distinctiveness that makes a person feel real as well as surprising. Our workshop will include daily writing exercises, some involving excerpts from pieces you have already drafted and some drawing freshly on your memory, observation, and imagination. Through these, you will generate and share new and significantly revised scenes; putting into practice a number of important characterization techniques, strengthening those with which you are already familiar, and experimenting with those you haven’t used before, at least with these particular characters.

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Rachel Pastan

Rachel Pastan’s most recent novel, Alena, was named an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review. She is also the author of two other novels, Lady of the Snakes and This Side of Married, which was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. In 2014 she edited Seven Writers, a chapbook of writing inspired by exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, where until recently she served as Editor-at-Large. She received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is a member of the Core Faculty in Fiction at the Bennington Writing Seminars M.F.A. program. She also teaches fiction at Swarthmore College.

Fear and Loathing, and Sometimes Even Joy: Getting Emotion on the Page Weekend Workshop July 14-15

Strong feeling is often what drives us to write. We want our reader to experience the sadness or outrage, the delight or sense of betrayal we feel when thinking about a fictional (or nonfictional) situation. But how do we do that, exactly? How do we tell a story that’s not cold, but that’s not melodramatic either? This workshop will explore a variety of ways to get emotion on the page—through description, in dialogue, via what characters do, and in the way we use language itself. We will look at how a variety of writers have tackled this challenge and do some experimenting of our own. This class will be useful for both beginning and more experienced writers, but please come with a scene or short piece (or a couple) to work from. Then prepare to make your classmates cry, laugh, gasp, and maybe even tremble with fear.

Planning A Novel: Making a Map and Avoiding Monsters Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

Sometimes a short story can be drafted in a great surge of inspiration, but a novel is a different kind of literary beast. How do we prepare ourselves to keep a story going over several hundred pages? What do we need to know in advance, and what might we hope to discover along the way? In this workshop, we will think about the journeys our characters take over the course of the novel and look at how those journeys drive the narrative action. Using exercises, and taking inspiration from a variety of models, we will help each other design engines powerful enough to carry us through to The End. Whether you’ve been drafting your novel for years or are just dreaming up a new story, this class will help you clarify your ideas and build a strong foundation for the work ahead.

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Juliet Patterson

Recently named a finalist for the 2017 Audre Lorde Award in Poetry, Juliet Patterson is the recipient of fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Minneapolis-based Institute for Community and Cultural Development. She’s the author of two full-length books, Threnody (Nightboat Books) and the Lambda Award finalist The Truant Lover (Nightboat Books). Her poems and essays have appeared widely in numerous magazines, and she’s also published two chapbooks (one prose and one poetry): Epilogue (Spout Press) and Dirge (Albion Books). Her most recent writing project, a memoir in progress entitled Sinkhole, was a 2017 finalist for a Loft-McKnight Award.

The Art of Description Weekend Workshop July 14-15

“It sounds like a simple thing, to say what you see,” Mark Doty has written. “But try to find the words for the shades of a mottled sassafras leaf or the reflectivity of a bay on an August morning—” In this workshop, we’ll take refuge in the sensory experience found in some contemporary writing as a way of thinking about a number of questions: How does description contain or convey meaning? What do we do when we describe something? Reproduce, account for, portray, trace, parcel out? How does one take the measure of the external world and what can it mean for our writing? Writers of all levels and genres are welcome and should be prepared for what will generally be a craft-based approach to your work and a thorough investigation into elements of image and description.

All in a Song: Exploring the Lyric Essay Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

What innovator John D’Agata calls an oddball genre—the lyric essay combines elements of poetry and essays, relying on the former for its insistence of compression, form and thinking and the latter in its devotion to the process of discovery of fact. How these two things come together is in the eye of the beholder, so in this workshop we’ll spend our first session attempting to define the genre ourselves by reading what others have to say about the form. From there, we’ll plunge into a variety of exercises and prompts to generate ideas for a larger essay. By the week’s end, students will have the rough draft of the essay in hand, with a clear direction on how to move the work forward. This class is for poets and prose writers alike who are interested in generating material to push themselves in new directions.

Burning Down the House (Or How to Write a Better Political Poem) Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

Like virtually everything else in our era, poetry has gotten sharply political these days. Writers are responding to this turbulent moment in the country’s history with a tsunami of poems that address issues like immigration, global warming, institutionalized racism, and health care. In this generative poetry workshop, we will read from a wide variety of protest and political poems and write as if our pens were on fire. We’ll talk about how to choose your subject for a political poem and discover which techniques and considerations can lead to meaningful connection with the reader. We will also focus on honing important aspects of craft, employing white space, caesuras, and elements of elliptical poetry to strengthen our work.

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Kathleen Rooney

A founding editor of Rose Metal Press and a founding member of Poems While You Wait, Kathleen Rooney is the author, most recently, of the novel Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St Martin’s Press, 2017). Her next book, The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette and Loulou Magritte, is forthcoming from Spork Press in 2018. With Eric Plattner, she is the co-editor of Rene Magritte: Selected Writings (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). Married to the writer Martin Seay, she lives in Chicago and teaches at DePaul University. Follow her on Twitter: @kathleenMrooney.

Writing the Body: Capturing the Human Pulse Across Genres Weekend Workshop June 16-17

A common intellectual fantasy is to be able to encounter pure ideas in a featureless imaginary space. But tough luck: ideas come from people, and people come with bodies. In this generative class, we will consider the implications of our embodiment on writing and look at how the body informs the mind and the art it creates. Sports, sickness, aging, beauty, pregnancy, disability, sex—when we write on these topics, what forms are best suited to say what we want to say? This cross-/mixed-genre course is designed to be a rich opportunity for creative writing in all genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Writers of every level with an interest in improving their ability to convincingly write from or about embodied experience will benefit from this intensive class.

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Anjali Sachdeva

Anjali Sachdeva’s fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, Yale Review, Creative Nonfiction, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, among other publications. She has taught writing at the University of Iowa, Augustana College, and Carnegie Mellon University, and now teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. She also worked for six years at the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, where she was Director of Educational Programs. Her short story collection, All the Names They Used for God, was published in February by Spiegel & Grau (Penguin Random House) and named a must-read book for 2018 by Elle.com and AM New York. You can read samples of her work at anjalisachdeva.com.

Literary Magazines Behind the Scenes Weekend Workshop June 23-24

Literary magazines are the first place of publication for many writers, and publishing work in a lit mag can be great preparation and publicity for an upcoming book. But many authors have no idea how a literary magazine works, what the editors want to see, or how to collaborate with an editor once a piece is accepted for publication. In this class we’ll talk about how large and small literary journals function differently, how journals differ from magazines, whether contests are worth entering, what happens to your manuscript after you submit it for publication, and how you can use all this information to your advantage. During the weekend participants will write a sample cover letter, a query letter for a nonfiction article, and a sample letter replying to an editor’s comments. They will also compile their own customized list of magazines and literary journals to which they can submit work and create a submission plan for their work in progress. Writers do not need to prepare any material ahead of time but can bring a list with summaries of completed works or works in progress if they wish.

The Five-Day Short Story Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

In this workshop, participants will write a complete short story in five days. Come armed with a character sketch, concept, or brief plot outline that you’d like to explore through fiction, and we’ll work together to craft the first draft of a story by the end of the week. (To be clear, this could simply be an idea for a story that can be expressed in a couple of sentences, so don’t despair if you’re signing up at the last minute; there will be plenty of time to adjust and refine your idea as the week progresses). Class time will be devoted to constructing scenes, solving problems, reading brief excerpts from participants’ work, creating characters, outlining plots, discussing best practices for creating a compelling story, analyzing short story structure, finding strategies to push past writer’s block, and setting specific writing goals for the following day. Participants will write or revise two to three pages per night to complete their story. Be prepared to make the most of your writing time, and to take advantage of the motivating structure that specific assignments and deadlines can provide.

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Sarah Saffian

Sarah Saffian (M.F.A., Columbia University) is the author of Ithaka, her memoir of being an adoptee who was found by her birth family. Formerly a professor of journalism at NYU and the New School and teacher of memoir at Sarah Lawrence College, Sarah has written for publications including The New York Times, Smithsonian, and Yoga Journal, and she has been a writer-in-residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Millay Colony. As a psychotherapist (L.M.S.W.), Sarah counsels individuals and groups, blending her areas of interest and expertise in Therapeutic Writing, a technique that uses memoir prompts as a tool for encouraging reflection, processing, and discovery. She also works individually as a writing coach. This is Sarah’s eleventh summer at the Festival. Do come visit: http://www.saffian.com.

Who You Looking At? Bringing Your Profile Subject to Life Weekend Workshop July 21-22

The profile, one of the foundations of narrative journalism, is a portrait painted in words. A profile writer serves as the eyes and ears of the reader, enabling the reader to experience the subject as palpably as one can without meeting in person. In this seminar/workshop, we’ll explore the interviewing and the writing aspects of the profile process: getting your subject to talk; being both prepared and open to surprise; trying on different perspectives (degrees of first person, fly-on-the-wall); prioritizing information; and using quotes to convey your subject vividly and precisely, bringing him or her to life on the page.

On Saturday, we’ll investigate the nuts and bolts of the form and what makes profiles like Lillian Ross’s “Portrait of Hemingway” and Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” successful; then we’ll split up and interview one another. Overnight, you’ll write a short profile of your colleague. On Sunday, we’ll share these profiles and workshop them on the spot.

Nothing to submit in advance, as we’ll generate new work during our time together. Inquisitive wordsmiths at all levels are welcome.

Advanced Memoir: The Art and Craft of the Personal Essay Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

In an effort to answer the cardinal question of memoir—who cares?—this workshop/seminar zeroes in on what’s most compelling about our life stories. What about you is potentially interesting to others? Can a personal essay stand alone as a complete mini-memoir?

We’ll read and discuss personal essays by Joan Didion, Ariel Levy, Oliver Sacks, and others, to enlighten and inspire us, and engage in some on-the-spot writing. Our main focus this week will be on the single personal essay you bring, which you’ll share and receive feedback on in workshop, revise and expand, and share again. You’ll leave our week together with a piece in solid shape and resources for pursuing publication.

Nothing to submit in advance, but so that we can hit the ground running, I do ask that you arrive with the first draft of a 500-word personal essay in hand, ready for workshop. Seasoned memoir writers aiming to publish in the short form are welcome, although previous publications aren’t required.

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Zach Savich

Zach Savich is the author of six books of poetry, including Daybed, and two books of prose, including Diving Makes the Water Deep, a memoir about cancer, teaching, and poetic friendship. His work has received the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Colorado Prize for Poetry, Omnidawn’s Chapbook Award, and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s Open Award, among other honors. His poems, essays, and criticism have appeared in journals and anthologies including American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, and Best New Poets. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he teaches in the B.F.A. Program for Creative Writing at the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia, and co-edits Rescue Press’s Open Prose Series.

Memoir on the Brink: Emergency, Extremity, and Big Changes Weeklong Workshop July 8-13

The experiences we need to write about the most can be the hardest to address. In this workshop, we’ll explore ways of writing about life events that we’re still figuring out. How can you tell a story when you don’t know how it ends? What language can reflect situations that seem impossible to describe? What emerges in emergency? Inspired by how writers have approached illness, grief, and other major transitions, we’ll write several short pieces that explore our ongoing experiences, and we’ll give one another feedback about longer work in progress (or about ideas for future writing). The topics will depend on the participants, but the method should be suitable for writers who are thinking about many types of experience; it will include consideration of common narrative patterns and how we can use or re-invent them. The environment will be supportive, inquisitive, and committed to helping us write about what matters most. Participants of all backgrounds and levels of experience are welcome.

Exploring Poetic Form Weekend Workshop July 21-22

This session will offer an intensive dive into the world of poetic form. After we analyze exemplary poems from a diverse range of poets, we’ll try experiments in meter, rhyme, fixed forms, and recent kinds of adventurous prosody. We’ll also discuss the role of form in contemporary poetry and give feedback on poems that participants have previously written, paying particular attention to elements of form. Whether you’re a seasoned sonneteer or a pro at procedural forms, whether you’re dedicated to free verse or writing poems for the first time, this session should help you think about how sound, shape, and structure can help poetry mean everything it can.

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Suzanne Scanlon

Suzanne Scanlon is the author of the novel Promising Young Women (2013) as well as Her 37th Year, An Index, which was chosen by Allan Gurganus for The Iowa Review fiction prize. Her fiction has appeared in many journals, including Bomb Magazine, The Iowa Review, The American Scholar, and DIAGRAM, and she writes about theater for the Chicago Reader and Time Out Chicago. She is a professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago, and was recently a Visiting Writer in Roosevelt University’s M.F.A. program.

Polishing and Publishing Your Short Prose Weekend Workshop June 16-17

Maybe you have a lot of work that’s almost, but not quite, done. Maybe you think you’re done but you don’t know what to do with what you’ve finished. This workshop will help you get that story or essay ready to send out. You will bring in writing that’s close (but not yet!) done, and by the end of our weekend, you’ll have it polished and prepped for submission. We’ll spend some time looking at a range of options for publication geared to your writing style and genre.

The Joy of…Revision!? Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

All writers revise, but it’s not always easy. In this workshop, we will explore a range of approaches to revision. Through writing exercises and workshops, you will write and re-write the same story or essay in a variety of ways. The exercises are designed to give you fresh perspectives on your work that will help you develop and deepen your original draft. These might include rewriting from a different character’s point- of-view or in a different tense or with a new structural device. This class is best for writers with some experience who are looking to generate and revise material.

Advancing Your Memoir: The Situation and the Story Weeklong Workshop July 8-13

In this advanced workshop, we will revisit our personal stories, using Vivian Gornick’s classic 2001 text on the art of personal narrative as our guide. As we develop our own narratives, we’ll consider the Situation: “the context or circumstance, sometimes plot” and the Story: “the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.” We’ll share and discuss sections of our work-in-progress in workshop, with the aim of helping each of us discover, communicate, and expand our essential story.

Sandra Scofield

Sandra Scofield is the author of seven novels including Beyond Deserving, a finalist for the National Book Award; a memoir; a book of essays about family titled Mysteries of Love and Grief; and a recent book of stories, Swim: Stories of the Sixties. She has also written two craft books for fiction writers. The Scene Book has helped thousands of writers since 2006. The Last Draft: The Novelist’s Guide to Revision was published in 2017 and is based on Sandra’s 20+ years of teaching at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Sandra is on the faculty of the Solstice M.F.A. Program at Pine Manor College. She is also an avid painter and a besotted grandmother.

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Agency, Struggle, and Transformation of Character in the Novel Weeklong Workshop July 8-13

Agency is the word for a character’s central role in pushing a story forward. Often a first draft traps us in a story with characters who are victims, who are passive, or who just can’t figure out what to do next. But responsibility for one’s own fate is a big part of making a character memorable. How do you assess your protagonist’s agency, especially if your character is in trouble? You build character struggle that comes from obstacles between what is desired and what seems possible. You upset the equilibrium and put good things at risk. Does every novel have to be about a hero? Absolutely not. Characters can fail and still become, just as characters can achieve but discover they have lost their true selves.

In the whole group and in smaller ones, we will look at your manuscript (or outline) and assess plot points in terms of agency, struggle, and transformation. You will write and share new scenes and summaries that deepen the meaning of your protagonist’s journey. We will also build scene sequences (how to get from here to there) so that you go home with plans for writing or revising. You’ll need a solid summary or chapter outline and a couple chapters. More is better, but the pages don’t have to be perfect, or even “great” at this point.

The Narrative Call: Polish and Deepen Your Novel Draft Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

This workshop assumes that you have been developing your novel for a while. You may have a draft or an outline completed. Either way, you should have an overview of the story and several chapters that you are ready to revise. The goal of the week is to develop an understanding of revision strategies, and to practice, with feedback. We will not be emphasizing a rework of plot, though you will inevitably get fresh perspective on it. Rather, you will focus closely on portions of your manuscript with an eye to enriching the story, the character, and the prose. In other words, this workshop is about the writing.

There are many things to think about in revision, and we will begin with a discussion of theme and structure, but the emphasis of the week will be on deepening your story through interiority (the inner voice of the protagonist), commentary (the voice of the narration), and threads of images (the sensory moments that strike the reader and resound throughout the story). We will look at models and do exercises. Using the free morning hours, you will revise core scenes to create more engagement of the reader with the character. This approach is challenging and exciting; it should put your novel into a whole new realm of meaning. We will review exercises early in the week, and then we will discuss revised scenes in workshop format. You will go away with a process for evaluating and revising your larger manuscript.

“Aboutness:” Leash Your Novel, Shape Your Writing, Pitch Your Book Weekend Workshop July 21-22

If you are writing, want to write, or have drafted a novel, you are thinking of All Those Pages. But the secret to a novel that flies is a novel you can talk about, a novel that can be compressed to the gem it is. Learn how to capture the essence of a story in a few clear sentences; further, analyze it as a scheme of component parts. That’s your way into revising, and it’s your way into telling someone they really should read it. Then write a summary that is your play-book. Come with what you know in a page and leave with what you need—to write, to revise, and maybe to sell a novel. Test-run your concept in this compressed, highly focused manner. This is high-energy, exciting work, and it’s an opportunity to get valuable feedback on the very idea of your novel. It’s fun, too. Suitable at any stage of the novel’s development.

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Mary Kay Shanley

Mary Kay Shanley has ten books that cross multiple genres, tapping into her skills as storyteller, essayist, historian and journalist. Her memoir, The Women Who Had Me, will be out sometime. The manuscript originally centered on her adoption, but ultimately came to also include stories from those unmarried women who, in decades past, were coerced into giving up their babies for adoption. An Iowa Author of the Year, Shanley directs writers’ groups, co-sponsors spiritual/reflective writing workshops, and presents in programs through Humanities Iowa. She has taught at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women—a life-changing experience. This is her twentieth year teaching in the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. She loves being part of the Festival as much as she loves biking and gardening in good weather.

The Why and How of Reflective Writing Weekend Workshop June 16-17

Ideas, stories, characters, and scenes emerge from our memory, from our imagination, from dreams, lived experiences, history, family and friends. Normally, we begin a writing journey by sorting through these myriad sources. But we have another source deep within and often unknown to us—a place where our inner self, our soul, the essence of who we are resides. Possibilities for writing wait there, too, though they’re not always apparent. So we begin by spending time reflecting—quietly, patiently, alone—until the words come to us, rather than from us. Then, it’s time to write. Reflection then writing, in contrast to thinking then writing. There’s a difference.

Reflective writing is a learned technique that connects us to a place deep within. Author Pat Schneider says, “May you hear in your own writing—the strangeness, the surprise of mysteries—the presence of ancestors, spirits—buried in the cells of your body.” In this weekend, we’ll explore this approach to writing. We’ll spend time reflecting, writing and sharing. If you wish, please send me a sample of your writing (200 words maximum) before we meet in Iowa City.

People, Emotion, Dialogue, Place, the Senses: Five Basic Tools in All Genres Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

Imagine a story about people who lack depth, or characters who lack emotional lives. Imagine these lusterless characters in hollow dialogue, in a setting so generic it fails to rise even to blandness. Imagine a story that blatantly ignores the richness our senses deliver. Insipid work is what we produce when we don’t utilize five basic tools that unleash soul and spirit into our writing. Each of these elements of story craft—developing the person, revealing emotion, using meaningful dialogue, creating an experience of place, and engaging our tactile senses—allows us to dig deeper into the how and why of the words we choose, and the order in which they appear. Whether you’re writing fiction, memoir, essays, history, comedy, mystery, inspiration, or romance, the basics are practical and consistently valuable. We’ll spend one day on each of these tools, exploring them via writing exercises, rich discussion, and in- and out-of-class assignments. Writing you bring from home, as well as writing we generate in class, will be workshopped in an environment that moves us forward. Writers at all levels are welcome—from those with “a little experience” to more practiced writers wanting to sharpen existing skills. I encourage you to send 5-15 pages ahead of time so I can familiarize myself with your style, but it is not a requirement. Come prepared for a rich experience in the classroom, from the assignments and from fellow students.

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Ami Silber

Ami Silber is a multi-genre author, publishing under her own name as well as the pseudonyms Zoë Archer and Eva Leigh. She has published more than twenty novels in literary fiction and romance. Her novels have been nominated for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award and the RT Book Reviews Readers’ Choice Award, and they have won the OCC RWA Book Buyers Best Award. She received the Glimmer Train Press Short Story Award for New Writers. Her books have also been translated into numerous languages. She received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and holds an M.A. in Literature from UC San Diego, as well as a B.A. in Pre- and Early Modern Literature from UC Santa Cruz. She lives in Central California with her husband. Learn more about Ami on the web at www.zoearcherbooks.com and www.evaleaighauthor.com.

Selling Your Book: Elevator Pitches, Hooks, and Back Cover Copy Weekend Workshop June 23-24

One of the most essential components of writing and selling fiction is how quickly and strongly you’re able to snare your audience. Having a strong hook is not only a good marketing strategy, it can also improve and strengthen your writing. In this workshop, we will discuss ways to sell our books to readers, agents, editors, and ourselves with highly-crafted, sharply-honed hooks and elevator pitches. We’ll use in-class writing prompts as well as discussions of pieces you bring from home to further our understanding of how to create marketable, sought-after fiction.

What Romance Novels Can Teach Us about Writing Captivating Fiction Weeklong Workshop June 24-29

In today’s market, the romance genre is one of the strongest and most enduring forms of fiction, with 2013 sales of over one billion dollars. Readers return again and again to lose themselves in the immersive world of romance. What brings them back and why do they remain loyal to this genre?

In this workshop, fiction writers of all genres will explore different techniques employed by romance authors that create the extraordinary bond with their readership. We will cover such topics as writing engaging and believable conflict, creating enveloping narratives, developing essential elements for unforgettable characters, and what it takes to foster devoted readers. We will use in-class writing prompts as well as pieces you bring from home to share as we explore how writers of all genres can glean valuable information from the world of romance.

Please note: You do not need to have prior exposure to romance novels to attend this workshop. It is open to everyone.

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Carol Spindel

Writer and activist Carol Spindel combines memoir, narrative nonfiction, and ethnography to explore a wide range of subjects. Her memoir of living in West Africa, In the Shadow of the Sacred Grove, is a New York Times Notable Book. Her nonfiction book Dancing at Halftime examines the controversy over American Indian-themed mascots in American sports. Her award-winning audio pieces have been heard on National Public Radio and her essays and reviews have appeared in publications including African Arts, Oxford American, and Guernica. She is a longtime activist with ACLU of Illinois.

Finding Your Threads: Shaping and Structuring Nonfiction Weeklong Workshop July 8-13

Annie Dillard famously said, “The writer of any work, and particularly any nonfiction work, must decide two crucial points: what to put in and what to leave out.” If you have a nonfiction or memoir project in progress, you probably agree. But you may be asking: how do I decide? I have all this material, but how do I shape it? Where do I begin and end? Which parts do I put in and which do I leave out?

To find answers, we will focus on identifying three to five threads or themes that run all the way through your essay or book, creating a warp that unifies the writing and provides narrative structure. Once you have identified your thematic threads, it will be easier to make the call—IN or OUT. Designed to help you step back and gain perspective on the process of structuring and completing a memoir or nonfiction project, this workshop is a place to explore structure through writing assignments and to get constructive feedback that clarifies the overarching goals and themes of your project. Don’t have a complete draft? Worried your project is some weird hybrid? No problem—write hard and bring what you’ve got. Join us to wrestle with structure, find unifying threads and clarify your goals in good company.

The Overstuffed Closet: A Weekend of Mini-Memoirs Weekend Workshop July 14-15

We all lead multiple lives, so no wonder it’s difficult to write a single memoir. And when our own lives are the subject, we have far too many subsidiary characters and subplots and know way too many details about all of them. This makes wrestling our memories into coherent literary form a bit like trying to organize an overstuffed closet, except in literature we don’t have plastic tubs or garage sales. In this class, would-be memoirists don’t have to organize the whole closet or try to make everything fit a single narrative. In and out of class, you will respond to assignments designed to help you create strings of significant moments. Instead of trying to write one memoir, writers will begin a series of mini-memoirs to capture their multiple lives. All writers are welcome.

Ian Stansel

Ian Stansel is the author of a novel, The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo, and a short story collection, Everybody’s Irish, which was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for debut fiction. He teaches creative writing at the University of Louisville.

62 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Structuring the Novel Weeklong Workshop June 17-22

We often write short stories by the seats of our pants, with a combination of intuition and curiosity. In fact, this might be the best way to approach a short piece of prose. But a longer work is a different animal. While all writing should be a process of discovery, for many writers a novel needs a bit more planning. In this class, we will examine the structures of several (rather short) novels and discuss the choices made by the authors. We will look at the relationships between present action and flashback, scene and exposition, plot and sub-plot, and primary and secondary characters. We will practice outlining and look at and discuss one another’s plans. At the end of the week, you will have a semi-detailed outline for your project, as well as more detailed plans for key plot points and scenes. The goal for this class is to open the possibilities for your book and to help you understand some of the myriad choices you might make for the novel you are writing or want to write.

Sarah Anne Strickley

Sarah Anne Strickley is the author of Fall Together: Stories Re-Told (Gold Wake, 2018). She’s a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellowship, an Ohio Arts grant, a Glenn Schaeffer Award from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and other honors. Her stories and essays have appeared in Oxford American, A Public Space, Witness, Harvard Review, Gulf Coast, The Southeast Review, The Normal School, the Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. Sarah is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. She teaches creative writing and serves as faculty editor of Miracle Monocle at the University of Louisville.

Nurturing a Daily Writing Practice Weekend Workshop June 16-17

As any writing instructor worth her salt will tell you, the key to developing as a writer is devoting your time and energy to the craft. But, as any busy budding writer might attest, that time can often be difficult to come by in the hustle and bustle of modern life. In this workshop, writers will learn strategies for cultivating a healthy daily writing practice. Specially-designed writing prompts will challenge you to make the time in your everyday life for your creative ambitions; feedback from fellow writers will help you to sharpen your skills; and group discussions of a variety of different published work will help you become more aware of the literary community that awaits you. Beginners and pros alike are welcome. The focus of this workshop will be on generating fresh, new work and healthy, new strategies.

Writing from Life Weekend Workshop June 23-24

Have you ever wondered if the stories you grew up hearing would make for a powerful written work? Have you ever considered bringing the story of your own life to the page? If so, join us this weekend. You’ll learn the difference between an engaging anecdote and a compelling work of art by experimenting in a variety of forms: short stories, essays, and poems. Readings of published work and writing exercises will draw forth the matters of craft at hand, and workshop sessions will help you shape the raw materials of life into persuasive works of prose or poetry. Beginners are welcome. Our focus will be on generating new work, but if you have ideas for a project, you are invited to bring them to the table.

63 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Elizabeth Stuckey-French is the author of the novels The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady and Mermaids on the Moon as well as a collection of short stories, The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa. Her young adult mystery novel, Where Wicked Starts, co-authored with Patricia Henley, was published in 2015. Along with Janet Burroway and Ned Stuckey-French, she is a co-author of Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Her short stories have appeared in The Normal School, Narrative Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, Five Points, and The O’Henry Prize Stories 2005. She was awarded a James Michener Fellowship and a Florida Book Award and has won grants from the Howard Foundation, the Indiana Arts Foundation, and the Florida Arts Foundation. She teaches fiction writing at Florida State University.

Shake up Your Novel Weeklong Workshop July 8-13

This class will focus on the novel-writing process. Come prepared to discuss a novel you’re already working on, even if it’s still in the planning stages. In a whirlwind week, we will work through the major issues novelists face—the instigating event, characterization, structure, and suspense. This class is not structured as a workshop. We won’t be looking at chapters you’ve already written. Rather, you will generate new work this week both in and out of class and share these pages with your fellow writers in class. Even if you’re fairly deep into a draft of a novel, the session will help you shake up that draft and see it in a new light. We’ll use exercises to tighten and intensify your plot, bring your characters into focus, and explore your setting. We will analyze a published novel and read novel excerpts for inspiration and illumination in our discussions of craft. Plan to return home energized and full of ideas about where to take your novel next.

Driving Through the Dark: Writing a Story in a Week Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

E.L. Doctorow said: “Writing a book is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights go, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

One of the wonderful things about writing exercises is that if you do enough of them, you can write an entire story that way—a story that, because you bypassed the logical, critical part of your brain, is often original, surprising, and powerful. In this class, you’ll put what you’re working on at home aside and create a new story this week in Iowa City, sharing your creative process with the group and getting feedback as you go. I’ll assign writing exercises to hone your skills in creating characters, building conflict, dramatizing scenes with dialogue and description, experimenting with voice, and using setting effectively. These short pieces will build on each other so that by the end of the week, you will have the first draft of a short story. We will wrap up the week by discussing our stories and suggesting possible routes to revision.

Come prepared to do lots of writing, both in and out of class because, to quote Doctorow again, “Planning to write is not writing. Outlining a book is not writing. Researching is not writing. Talking to people about writing is not writing. Writing is writing.”

64 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Ned Stuckey-French

Ned Stuckey-French teaches at Florida State University and is the author of The American Essay in the American Century, co-editor of Essayists on the Essay: Montaigne to Our Time, co-author of Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, and book review editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. His essays have appeared in magazines such as In These Times, The Normal School, TriQuarterly, culturefront, Guernica, The Missouri Review, and middlebrow; and have been listed six times among the notable essays of the year in Best American Essays.

Are We There Yet? Revising Your Essay Weeklong Workshop July 8-13

A first draft is a wonderful thing, but it only begins the process, for writing is mostly revising.

Proofreading, copy-editing, and polishing are necessary, but they are not revision. Revision is re- envisioning. It’s about getting out of your computer and working with a hardcopy. It’s about digging deeper to find out what your essay is really about, and then what else it’s about. As the essayist William Kittredge put it, “No one will pay to see you juggle one orange.” Revising means finding out if you’ve started your essay at the right place, found your ending yet, arrived at your real title. It may mean cutting ruthlessly. It may mean adding new scenes. It requires that you be persnickety, but also honest and brave.

In this week, we’ll study the revision process of published writers and do some revision exercises, but mostly we’ll critique our own drafts in workshop. Please plan to send a 10- to 15-page (3000 to 5000 words) essay draft in advance of our meeting in Iowa City.

We won’t spend our last day together licking stamps and envelopes or hitting the send button at Submittable.com, but we’ll work to get your essay ready to send out and we’ll talk about where to send it.

An Essay in a Week Weeklong Workshop July 15-20

I love the personal essay and want to help you write one. Or at least begin to write one.

This workshop is about generating new material. In a week of exercises that will help us tap our memories, find our form, and begin to revise, we will write a draft of an essay, and find the material and techniques that will help us write many more. I’ll lecture some about various kinds of essays, you’ll write and read a bit each night, and we’ll workshop our drafts. If scenes are the building blocks of essays, reflection is the mortar. We’ll talk about how to use both more effectively.

An essay is more than an anecdote (though it might start as one). An essay is something that’s more ambitious, layered, and universal. Getting to a final draft requires technical skill but also bravery and innovation. Together, we’ll work through this whole process.

65 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Kali VanBaale

Kali VanBaale is the author of the novels The Good Divide and The Space Between. She is the recipient of an American Book Award, an Eric Hoffer Book Award, an Independent Publisher’s silver medal for fiction, and a State of Iowa major artist grant. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Numéro Cinq, Nowhere Magazine, The Milo Review, Northwind Literary, Poets&Writers, The Writer and several anthologies. She’s also the creator and editor of Iowa Writers [and where to find them], a site and database that showcases Iowa authors, poets, scriptwriters, publishers, and illustrators. Kali holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a faculty member of the Lindenwood University M.F.A. Creative Writing Program. She lives outside Des Moines with her family. To learn more, visit www.kalivanbaale.com and www.iowa-writers.com.

Revising the Novel Weekend Workshop, June 16-17

You’ve typed “The End” on the first draft of a novel in all its messy glory, and now the daunting task of revising and editing hundreds of pages sits before you. Where to start? Which problem to tackle first, and how? This class is for fiction writers with a working draft of a novel-in-progress at any stage in need of revision. The goal of our weekend is to develop some organization in revising and an understanding of particular revision strategies. We’ll discuss and practice techniques tailored for novel revision to help develop and shape the areas of dramatic tension, pacing, plot, scene, characterization and narrative voice, setting, and style. We’ll also examine various novel-length structures and examples from contemporary literature, and do some in-class writing exercises that engage specific aspects of your novel-in-progress. Participants will not be required to bring pages to workshop. Instead, you will learn and practice revision techniques to apply to your novel, such as the goal/motivation/conflict technique, testing your plot for cause and effect, layering scenes, getting closer to your characters through a psychological questionnaire, fully utilizing your setting (by burning it to the ground), and editing out filter words. You’ll leave this weekend with a revision approach designed to make the process less intimidating.

Points of Entry in Storytelling Weekend Workshop July 14-15

T.S. Eliot once said, “Every moment is a fresh beginning.” In storytelling, this couldn’t be more true as we face new moments and fresh beginnings over and over whenever we start a new story, a new chapter, or even a new scene. And fresh beginnings mean questions. Where should this novel begin, with a prologue or in medias res? How should I open my memoir? Where should this next chapter or scene pick up to smoothly transition from the scene before it? This class will focus on points of entry in all its forms— prologues, frame narrators, new chapters, new scenes, and false starts, as well as related considerations like handling backstory, transitions, point of view, pacing, and pitfalls. We’ll evaluate points of entry in both classic and contemporary novels, memoirs, and short stories (and even a television series or two), we’ll utilize tested writing prompts to generate some beginnings, and each participant will present up to 10 pages of a story in progress for the group to discuss. Our goal will be to end the weekend with a full bank of points of entry strategies and ideas. This workshop welcomes writers of all levels and genres.

66 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Workshops by Instructor

Anthony Varallo

Anthony Varallo is the author of This Day in History, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award; Out Loud, winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize; Think of Me and I’ll Know (Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books); and Everyone Was There, winner of the 2016 Elixir Press Fiction Prize, forthcoming in 2017 from Elixir Press. Currently he is an associate professor of English at the College of Charleston, where he is the fiction editor of Crazyhorse.

The Three-Jump Story: A Writer’s Weekend Challenge Weekend Workshop July 21-22

“Stories are either best written in one jump or three, according to length. The three-jump story should be done on three successive days, then a day or so for revision and off she goes. This of course is the ideal.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald

Taking F. Scott Fitzgerald’s assertion that a short story is best written in three “jumps” as our point of departure, we will attempt to write a complete, original short story in three sessions. In the first session— or “jump”—we’ll write the beginning of the story, with action unfolding in the present; in the second “jump” we’ll focus on backstory, the past, and things that live beneath the surface of the present action; in the third “jump” we’ll continue the present action, driving the story toward resolution. Between each jump session we’ll share our work aloud and get feedback before heading to the next jump. Once we’ve finished the three sessions, you will have the opportunity to take your story home and revise it before bringing it back the following day, when we will workshop our stories together.

First, Third, and (Sometimes) Second: A Point-of-View Fiction Workshop Weeklong Workshop July 22-27

“The house of fiction has many windows, but only two or three doors. I can tell a story in the third person or in the first person, and perhaps the second person singular, or in the first-person plural, though successful examples of these latter two are rare indeed. And that is it. Anything else probably will not much resemble narration; it may be closer to poetry, or prose-poetry.” —James Wood, How Fiction Works

When we first begin to write fiction, selecting point-of-view feels about as casual as choosing which pair of socks to wear: blue or darker blue? Maybe brown? As we develop our writing, though, point-of- view gradually begins to reveal itself for what it truly is: the most important element of fiction, period. Everything orbits around point-of-view: detail, imagery, conflict, characterization, dialogue and plot. In this workshop, we will come to a deeper appreciation of point-of-view through in-class writing exercises, selected readings, and workshop of student short stories or novel chapters. Together we will explore the pros and cons of first, third and (sometimes) second person narration. Be prepared to write a lot, have fun, and walk away in awe of point-of-view. Required: participants will bring copies of an original short story or novel chapter of 12-20 pages in length.

67 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form The Eleventh Hour Summer in Iowa City Getting Here Schedules

The Eleventh Hour

The Eleventh Hour Series is comprised of hour-long presentations at 11:00 a.m. each weekday of the Festival. The series features issues of special interest to writers, including aspects of craft, process, the writing life, and publishing. Past topics have included “Talking It Out: Writing As Conversation,” “Creative Nonfiction for the Visual Learner,” and “How Poets See the World: The Art of Description.”

The Eleventh Hour features a different presenter each day. Specific descriptions are posted on our website at the beginning of the sessions. The Eleventh Hour is free and open to the public as well as Festival participants.

To listen to podcasts of past lectures, visit The Writing University at https://www.writinguniversity.org/

Summer in Iowa City

The Festival encourages you to meet and get to know members of other workshops and experience the energy and ambiance of summer in Iowa City. Festival writers enjoy getting together in the mornings for coffee and conversation, and gatherings are planned throughout the week. You’ll want to take time to lose yourself in Iowa City’s many bookstores and literary haunts, to dally on the bank of the Iowa River, and to enjoy theater, film, and music downtown. Readings by outstanding contemporary voices, hosted by Prairie Lights Books, are a favorite among locals and Festival participants alike. The packet you will receive at orientation when you arrive includes details on things to do and see, and our staff are always happy to make recommendations.

Getting Here

Iowa City is easily accessible. If you are driving, you will find us just south of Interstate 80. The Eastern Iowa Regional Airport (CID) is located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, about twenty miles north of Iowa City. Shuttle service is available from the airport. The Quad City International Airport (MLI) is located in Moline, Illinois, approximately 65 miles from Iowa City. Though not as close as the airport in Cedar Rapids, flights into Moline can be a value. Greyhound Bus service is available between Moline and Iowa City. There is no train service to Iowa City.

68 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form The Eleventh Hour Summer in Iowa City Getting Here Schedules

Weeklong and Two-Week Schedule

Weeklong and two-week workshops begin Sunday evening with a light dinner, orientation, and the first class meeting. For the rest of the week, workshops meet each afternoon, Monday through Friday, from 2:00-5:00. Mornings are reserved for The Eleventh Hour Series, and for writing, revising, and annotating manuscripts in preparation for your workshop. Your conference with your instructor may be scheduled in this time, too.

Sunday 6:30–7:30 p .m . Registration and light dinner 7:30 p .m . Large-group orientation and welcome 8:00 p .m . First class meeting

Monday–Friday 7:30–11:00 a .m . Coffee and conversation downtown; time to write, read, critique manuscripts, and confer 11:00 a .m . The Eleventh Hour Series; presentations on topics of interest to writers 2:00–5:00 p .m . Individual groups in workshop session

Weeklong and two-week sessions include the following events: Monday, 5:30 p .m . Festival reception Wednesday, 7:00 p .m . Open Mike: readings by participants Thursday, 6:00 p .m . All-Festival dinner

Weekend Schedule

Saturday 8:30–9:30 a .m . Registration and light breakfast 9:30 a .m . Large-group orientation and welcome 10:00 a m. . Meet in individual workshops 12:00 Noon–2:00 p .m . Lunch on your own; read, write, critique manuscripts 2:00–4:00 p .m . Meet in individual workshops

Break for dinner on your own

7:00 p .m . Open Mike: Readings by participants

Sunday 9:00–11:00 a .m . Meet in individual workshops 11:00 a .m .–1:00 p .m . Lunch on your own; read, write, critique manuscripts 1:00–3:00 p .m . Meet in individual workshops

Note: It is possible to take a weeklong and weekend workshop in succession, and participants routinely do so. They do not overlap.

69 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Where to Stay

Where to Stay

The following properties offer special rates to Festival participants. To receive these rates, indicate that you are participating in the Iowa Summer Writing Festival when making your reservations. There may be some weeks in which choice of housing is limited. We strongly encourage you to make your reservations early.

Iowa House Graduate Heartland Inn Radisson Hotel A limited number of rooms Iowa City Rooms have been reserved Rooms have been reserved have been reserved at the at the Heartland Inn, located at the Radisson Hotel & A limited number of rooms Iowa House, a hotel located on in Coralville about two miles Conference Center Coralville. have been reserved at the campus in the Iowa Memorial from downtown Iowa City. The Radisson is located just newly renovated Graduate Union. Rates are $85 per night Rooms include a microwave off I-80, exit 242. There is a Iowa City, located in downtown for an interior room and $95 oven and refrigerator. Enjoy restaurant (Twelve01 Kitchen Iowa City on the pedestrian per night for River/Campus complimentary breakfast and Tap) onsite for breakfast, mall. Taking a page from Iowa view rooms (rates include tax). and evening snacks, wireless lunch, dinner, and room City’s literary legacy, the lobby Guests enjoy complimentary internet access, free parking, service. The spacious guest is stacked with books and continental breakfast, free and an indoor swimming pool. rooms include a microwave communal tables and includes parking and wireless internet Rates are $75 per night plus and refrigerator as well as a café and bar. The Graduate access, as well as admission to tax. The Heartland provides complimentary wireless provides complimentary the Campus Recreation Center, free shuttle service to campus internet access. Rates are $94 shuttle service in and around which has a swimming pool. at scheduled times. In addition, per night plus tax. Radisson the Iowa City/Coralville area. Rooms include microwaves the city bus stops directly guests enjoy free shuttle Rates are $109 plus tax per and refrigerators. Note that across the street from the service, by request, to locations night. Complimentary basic cafeterias in the Iowa Memorial hotel. Make your reservations in Iowa City, free parking, internet access is available in Union are closed evenings and by calling 1-800-334-3277 or and an indoor swimming pool all guestrooms. Paid parking weekends in summer. Plan to go 319-351-8132. Mention VIP and fitness center. Make your is available in the nearby city downtown (about four blocks code ISWF or indicate that you reservations by calling 319- ramp. You may make your uphill) for meals. There is a free are participating in the Iowa 351-5049 and asking for the reservations by calling 319-337- campus bus stop directly across Summer Writing Festival when Iowa Summer Writing Festival 4058 or 800-848-1335. Indicate the street that makes stops you call. These rooms will be block. These rooms will be held that you are participating in the around campus and downtown. held until the day of arrival for until the day of arrival for each Iowa Summer Writing Festival Make your reservations by each session. session. when you call. These rooms will calling 319-335-3513, or book be held until three weeks before online at www.iowahousehotel. the beginning of each session. com. Enter 13 in the group code field. These rooms will be held until three weeks before the beginning of each session.

70 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form Where to Stay

Homewood Home2 Suites by Traveling Other Housing Suites by Hilton Hilton Iowa City- Companions/ For a comprehensive list of area hotels, motels, and bed Coralville— Coralville Sharing a Room & breakfasts, visit the Iowa Iowa River Suites are also available at If you are looking for a traveling City/Coralville Convention Home2 Suites by Hilton Iowa companion to Iowa City, or & Visitors Bureau at www. Landing City-Coralville. Rates for you’re interested in sharing iowacitycoralville.org and Suites are available at Festival participants are $89 housing costs during your select “Lodging.” Airbnb and Homewood Suites by Hilton plus tax (1-4 nights), $84 plus stay, join our Facebook travel craigslist both list rentals Coralville. This property is tax (5-29 nights), and $79 (30+ and housing forum—The Iowa in the area. In addition, the an excellent value for those nights). Rates include a 1 King Summer Writing Festival Festival keeps an on-going list planning longer stays and bed or 2 Queen bed Studio Suite Hovel—and post your inquiry: of alternative housing options coming with a car. Rates for with fully equipped kitchen, https://www.facebook.com/ as we learn of them. These Festival participants are $114 HDTV, wi-fi, daily breakfast, groups/iowasummerwriting include summer sublets and plus tax (1-4 nights), $109 plus parking, on-site laundry, festivalhovel/. rooms in private homes, etc. tax (5-29 nights), and $99 (30+ 24-hour fitness center, pool, Email us at iswfestival@uiowa. nights). Rates include a King hot tub, outdoor fire pit and edu or call 319-335-4160 if Studio Suite with fully equipped grills. Home2 Suites by Hilton you would like a copy of the kitchen, HDTV, complimentary is just off I-80, Exit 240, and alternative housing list or if wi-fi, hot breakfast buffet, across from Coral Ridge Mall. you have a property you would dinner with beer and wine (M- Reserve online at home2suites. like to include on it. For more Th) and parking. Homewood com, or call 319-337-5011. listings of summer sublets and Suites by Hilton is just off Please indicate that you are properties with short-term I-80, Exit 242, and half a block participating in the Iowa leases, check the Off-Campus from the Coralville Transit Summer Writing Festival when Housing Services page on The Intermodal Facility Cambus/ you call. University of Iowa website: City Bus stop. Reserve online https://offcampushousing. at homewoodsuites.hilton. uiowa.edu/property/rental/ com, or call 319-338-3410. page/2 Please indicate that you are participating in the Iowa Summer Writing Festival when you call.

71 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form

The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a program for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to participate. How to Register Deadlines For questions regarding registration, contact the Center for Registrations for weeklong and weekend workshops are accepted on a Conferences at 319-335-4141 or 800-551-9029, or email first-come first-served basis. Class size is limited to twelve. It is a good [email protected]. idea to register early. We will notify you promptly if the workshop you have selected is full. If you do not wish to enroll in a second choice, we For questions regarding workshop content, or for help choosing a will refund your entire payment. We will honor your choices according workshop, call the Festival office at 319-335-4160. See “Skill Levels/ to availability. Choosing a Workshop” on page 2.

Two-week intensive workshops are by application only and limited to All workshops are noncredit. Auditors or other nonparticipating 10 registrants. The application deadline is April 19. visitors are not permitted.

You may enroll in only one workshop per week or weekend. You may, however, enroll in as many weeks or weekends as you like. Fees

Payment must accompany registration. Register online or by phone, Housing and most meal costs are not included in workshop fees. fax, or mail with MasterCard, Visa, Discover, or American Express. Fees for weeklong workshops include a light dinner on the Sunday Checks or money orders are accepted with registrations in person evening of registration, a reception Monday evening, and dinner and by mail. Thursday evening. Weekend fees include a Saturday morning continental breakfast. Register online: centerforconferences.uiowa.edu/conferences. A nonrefundable deposit is required for each course for which Register by phone: 319-335-4141 or 800-551-9029 you register.

Register by fax: 319-335-4039 Weeklong Workshop $685 if paid in full when you register. $275 of your payment is a Register by mail: complete the registration form on pages 74–77, nonrefundable deposit. indicating workshop(s) and including payment. Make checks or Weeklong Workshop Installment Plan money orders payable to Center for Conferences. Mail to: $705 if you pay in two installments, $275 nonrefundable deposit when you register and the remaining $430 at least ten days in Center for Conferences advance of your workshop. A schedule for payments due on the The University of Iowa installment plan appears below. 250 CEF Iowa City, IA 52242 Weekend Workshop $360 payment in full when you register. $125 of your payment is a nonrefundable deposit. Receive $25 off one weekend workshop for every weeklong workshop in which you enroll. Discounts may not be transferred or combined.

72 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form

Two-Week Intensive Workshop Terms: The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a community built Note that fee structures, deadlines, and refund policies for the two- on an assumption of shared enterprise, in the spirit of mutual week workshop differ from those described elsewhere. respect. We reserve the right to a) revoke the registration of or b) dismiss from the program any person who disrupts the learning/ Total cost is $1985. A $985 nonrefundable deposit is due upon working environment of others or threatens this enterprise. In acceptance. There is a $35 nonrefundable submission fee for two- addition, participants in the Festival are subject to all University of week intensive workshops. If you are accepted into a two-week Iowa policies governing conduct in our community, including the intensive workshop, the $35 submission fee will be applied toward University’s Policy on Sexual Harassment: https://opsmanual.uiowa. the cost of the workshop. The $35 submission fee may be applied edu/community-policies/sexual-harassment. toward the registration cost of a weeklong or weekend workshop if you are not admitted to the two-week intensive.

Applications for the Novel Manuscript Two-Week Intensive Weeklong/Weekend Workshop must be received by Thursday, April 19, 2018. Pay your $35 submission fee by calling the Center for Conferences at 319- Workshops Transfer Policy 335-4141, or via online registration at centerforconferences.uiowa. edu/conferences. Then email submission materials (detailed in If you wish to transfer to another workshop after you have registered, the course description) to [email protected]. Please there will be a processing charge of $50 for each transfer, provided include the workshop title (Novel Manuscript Workshop) and your the transfer is at least ten days prior to the start date of your name in the subject line. workshop. Thereafter, the charge to transfer is $150. Deadlines for transfers follow the schedule below. Notification of acceptance into the two-week intensive workshop will be made on or before Friday, May 4. If you are accepted, you We are not able to make exceptions to the cancellation and must pay your nonrefundable deposit of $985 by Wednesday, May 9 transfer policies. to secure your spot. Full payment is due Friday, June 8. No refunds will be made after June 8. If admitted to the two-week intensive Schedule for Refunds (Minus Deposit), $50 Transfers, and workshop, plan to submit your full manuscript to the instructor via Payments Due on Installment Plan email for distribution among your fellow novelists no later than Friday, May 11. If the workshop begins: You must cancel/transfer your registration/pay your balance by 12:00 noon, Weeklong/Weekend Thursday:

Workshops Cancellation Policy June 16 (weekend) June 7 June 17 June 7 If you must cancel your registration, and the cancellation is at least June 23 (weekend) June 14 ten days prior to the beginning of your workshop, we will refund June 24 June 14 your payment minus your deposit. You will forfeit your deposit for each workshop for which you are registered and cancel. If July 8 June 28 you must cancel within the ten days preceding your workshop for July 14 (weekend) July 5 any reason, you will forfeit your entire payment. A schedule for July 15 July 5 refunds (minus nonrefundable deposits) appears to the right. If July 21 (weekend) July 12 we must cancel a workshop, and you do not wish to choose another July 22 July 12 workshop, you will receive a refund of your entire payment.

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I. Select Your Workshop(s) !

Choose no more than one workshop per week or weekend. You may enroll in as many weeks or weekends as you’d like. They do not overlap.

Weekend Workshops June 16-17 Weekend Workshops June 23-24 18-167-01 18-174-01

■ Mary Allen Travel Writing Made Easy ■ Timothy Bascom An Enormous Eye: Essay ■ Venise Berry Muddy Water: Controlling Plot ■ Venise Berry Novel Writing: Scenes ■ Jonathan Blum Creating Compelling ■ Kelly Dwyer Flash Fiction in a Flash Characters ■ Hugh Ferrer Who’s That Knocking: Plot ■ Amy Butcher The Literary Memoir ■ Katie Ford Weekend Frenzy: Poems ■ Thomas K . Dean Revising Sentences for Impact ■ Eric Goodman Write Funny to Me ■ Daniel Khalastchi Betting on the Muse: Poetry ■ Sands Hall Do I Know My Narrator? ■ Sabrina Orah Mark Obsession: A Poetry Workshop ■ Christine Hemp Scene vs . Reflection ■ Marc Nieson The Art of Metaphor ■ Jim Heynen Writing Emotions ■ Lon Otto Writing in Layers ■ Michael Morse From Either/Or to More ■ Kathleen Rooney Writing the Body ■ Marc Nieson The Art of Place ■ Suzanne Scanlon Polishing/Publishing Short ■ Anjali Sachdeva Literary Magazines Prose ■ Ami Silber Selling Your Book ■ Mary Kay Shanley Why/How of Reflective Writing ■ Sarah Strickley Writing from Life ■ Sarah Strickley Nurturing a Writing Practice ■ Kali VanBaale Revising the Novel

Weeklong Workshops June 24-29 18-175-01 Weeklong Workshops June 17-22 18-168-01 ■ Jeffery Renard Allen How Do I Start ■ Timothy Bascom Truth Be Told: Essay ■ Jonathan Blum Short Story Workshop ■ Thomas K . Dean Finding the Story ■ Amy Butcher Essay Bootcamp ■ Kelly Dwyer Five Elements of Novel ■ Susan Taylor Chehak Writing Weird ■ Hugh Ferrer In Convincing Style: ■ Katie Ford Adv . Poetry Workshop ■ Max Garland The Poetry of Memory ■ Sands Hall Novel: The Next Draft ■ Eric Goodman The Final Draft: Novel ■ Christine Hemp Mini-Memoirs ■ Jim Heynen From Memory to Art ■ Daniel Khalastchi New You: Revising Poems ■ James McKean Shape of Time in Memoir ■ Marc Nieson Memoir: On Self & Society ■ June Melby A Hedonistic Week ■ Lon Otto Storyteller’s Tools ■ Michael Morse Echo, Letter, Text: Poems ■ Suzanne Scanlon The Joy of…Revision!? ■ Lon Otto Everyone Is Strange ■ Mary Kay Shanley People, Emotion, Dialogue ■ Anjali Sachdeva The Five-Day Short Story ■ Ian Stansel Structuring the Novel ■ Ami Silber What Romance Teaches

Two-Week Intensive Workshop July 8-20 18-189-02

■ Paula Morris Novel Manuscript

74 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form

Weeklong Workshops July 8-13 Weeklong Workshops July 15-20

! 18-189-01 18-196-01

■ Mary Allen Encountering Our Lives ■ Jennifer Colville Inventive Female Voice ■ Kate Aspengren Playwrights Workshop ■ Hope Edelman Story Beneath Your Story ■ Cecile Goding The Perfect Lie ■ Mieke Eerkens Nonfiction Book Proposal ■ Patricia Henley Kickstart YA Novel ■ Diana Goetsch Free-Writing Intensive ■ Zach Savich Memoir on the Brink ■ Charles Holdefer “Who’s Talkin’ Here?” ■ Suzanne Scanlon Advancing Your Memoir ■ Wayne Johnson Novel Solutions ■ Sandra Scofield Agency, Struggle: Novel ■ Jeremy Jones From Family History ■ Carol Spindel Finding Your Threads ■ Jude Nutter Freedom of Restraint: Poetry ■ E . Stuckey-French Shake Up Your Novel ■ Rachel Pastan Planning a Novel ■ N . Stuckey-French Are We There Yet: Essay ■ Juliet Patterson All in a Song: Lyric Essay ■ Sandra Scofield The Narrative Call: Novel ■ E . Stuckey-French Driving Through the Dark ■ N . Stuckey-French An Essay in a Week Weekend Workshops July 14-15 18-195-01

■ Susan Aizenberg Poetry & the Third Muse Weekend Workshops July 21-22 ■ Thomas Fox Averill What’s Happening?—Plot 18-202-01 ■ Linda Bendorf Transforming Moments ■ Sarah Sadie Busse/ ■ Nancy K . Barry Present, Past, & Imperfect ■ Jacqueline Briggs Martin Catching White Cows ■ Venise Berry Writing a Book Proposal ■ Margaret Chapman Novel Boot Camp ■ Kelly Dwyer Writing the Popular Novel ■ Mieke Eerkens Getting the Words Down ■ Mieke Eerkens PROMPTAPALOOZA! ■ Diana Goetsch Extraordinary Seeing ■ Cecile Goding Excavating the Anecdote ■ Wayne Johnson Telling the Tale ■ Diana Goetsch Craft & Vision: Poetry ■ Gordon Mennenga Writing Wild: Voice ■ Jeremy Jones Writing about Nowhere ■ Jude Nutter Pace Yourself: Poems ■ Malinda McCollum Extra/Ordinary: Fiction ■ Rachel Pastan Fear & Loathing: Emotion ■ Gordon Mennenga The Blank Page ■ Juliet Patterson The Art of Description ■ Beau O’Reilly Monologue in the Moment ■ Carol Spindel The Overstuffed Closet ■ Sarah Saffian Who You Looking At? ■ Kali VanBaale Points of Entry in Stories ■ Zach Savich Exploring Poetic Form ■ Sandra Scofield “Aboutness”: Novel ■ Anthony Varallo The Three-Jump Story

Weeklong Workshops July 22-27 18-203-02

■ Susan Aizenberg Writing Alone Together ■ Nancy K . Barry Transforming Letters ■ Kelly Dwyer Plotting the Novel ■ Hope Edelman Starting the Memoir ■ Hugh Ferrer Characters in Search ■ Robin Hemley The Frangible Memoir ■ Malinda McCollum Five-Day MFA: Fiction ■ Gordon Mennenga Decisions: First Chapters ■ Juliet Patterson Burning Down the House ■ Sarah Saffian Advanced Memoir ■ Anthony Varallo 1st, 2nd, & Sometimes 3rd

75 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form

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76 Welcome The Workshop The Festival Experience Registration Information Registration Form

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Number of weeklong workshops at full payment ______x $685 paid now = $______(Payment includes $275 nonrefundable deposit for each weeklong workshop.)

Number of weeklong workshops on installment plan ______x $275 nonrefundable deposit paid now = $______plus $430 per workshop due ten days before your week begins . pl e as e i nclud e t h i s pag e if youre ma i l ng you a r re Total cost on the installment plan is $705 per week .

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77 Iowa Summer Writing Festival Non-Profit Organization The University of Iowa U. S. Postage 250 Continuing Education Facility PAID Iowa City, IA 52242 U.I.C.C.I.

117 noncredit writing workshops across the genres • Open to adults 18 and over • Visit us at https://iowasummerwritingfestival.org/

THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA