Amy Margolis began her career with the Festival as a graduate assistant in 1990 and continued as associate director through the nineties. She's directed the program since 2000. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She’s taught creative writing in the Festival, at the University of Iowa, and as a visiting writer in programs nationwide. Her fiction and nonfiction appear in The Iowa Review, most recently in the Spring 2023 issue. Amy is currently at work on a memoir-in-shards about her life as a dancer in the late seventies, at the onset of the AIDS crisis.

Becca Klaver is the author of the poetry collections Ready for the World, Empire Wasted, and LA Liminal. She has taught at colleges and universities around the country and through community programs such as Iowa City Poetry, the Midwest Writing Center, and the University of Chicago’s Writer’s Studio. She directed the Center for the Literary Arts at Cornell College, helped run the BA and MFA creative writing programs at Columbia College Chicago, and has independently hosted salons, talk series, and reading groups. As an editor, Becca co-founded Switchback Books and is co-editing the anthology Electric Gurlesque. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, she holds degrees from the University of Southern California (BA), Columbia College Chicago (MFA), and Rutgers University (PhD).

 Alisa received a BFA in Drama and MA in Educational Theatre from New York University, and a PhD in Anthropology from Syracuse University; she also studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and conducted dissertation research on a Fulbright-Nehru scholarship. Among her other writing, she authored scripts for India’s Sesame Street, Galli Galli Sim Sim, and is currently at work on an ethnography on tailors working in Jaipur, India. A co-founder of Home Ec. Workshop in Iowa City, she often teaches knitting and sewing to crafters of all ages. At the University of Iowa, she teaches an anthropology course on fashion and culture, and previously served as youth programs coordinator for the International Writing Program.

Danielle was the 2010-2011 Rona Jaffe fellow in Poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she earned her MFA. Her work can be seen in places like Image Journal, diode, and elsewhere. She currently coordinates online learning for the Magid Center for Writing at the University of Iowa and is at work on a collection of essays.