This weeklong course offers participants the unique opportunity to explore the craft of fiction through the lens of the guidelines, strategies, and principles that are commonly taught in MFA programs. Whether one is a seasoned writer or just starting out, this course is designed to build and strengthen your narrative skills in a supportive and enriching environment. This is a fiction workshop for participants with work in progress. We will cover essential writing principles such as voice, tone, character development, structuring plot, the art of creating compelling dialogue, and more. The course will also provide an exploration of various narrative techniques that can elevate a writing sample. Throughout the workshop, participants will gain experience with effective workshop techniques that encourage constructive criticism and detailed feedback. Writers will evaluate the work of their peers while also receiving thoughtful insights on their own writing. This collaborative approach fosters a community of learning, where one can connect with fellow writers and enhance one’s storytelling abilities. In addition to the craft of fiction, we will discuss the application process for MFA programs, offering guidance on crafting a strong statement of purpose and strategies for becoming a competitive candidate. This includes tips on presenting your writing application effectively and showcasing your artistic vision. By the end of this workshop, participants will emerge with a deeper understanding of the narrative craft, increased confidence in their writing, and valuable insights into pursuing an MFA in fiction. Join us for this unique experience as you take the first step toward honing your skills and advancing your writing journey in a dynamic and supportive setting. In this workshop, we will workshop writing you bring from home.

Do your poems ignite in form or flurry? Are you a counter, a feeler, a connector, or a mess? A tinkerer or an iterator? Do your lines tend to blossom or knot? In this poetry workshop we’ll read and respond to participant poems with attention to control and chaos (not mutually exclusive) and how they manifest in one’s subjects, processes, revision practices, and endings. This class will be generative, joyful, energetic, and inquisitive. We’ll begin the week by sharing participant-made “calibration bouquets” (a small collection of what influences or provokes your writing) in order to quickly get to know each other’s work. Though our discussions will center participant writing, we’ll also take a look at poems by Lo Kwa Mei-en, Harryette Mullen, Oliver Baez Bendorf, and Lauren Shapiro—all writers interested in the intersection of turmoil and structure. This workshop is open to poets at all levels with a desire to explore what makes a poem fit together or fall apart. Each participant will workshop at least three poems, and our week together will include a one-on-one conference and personalized reading list. In this workshop, we will offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.

This class will focus on how we can use an investigation and exploration of the wider world as a springboard for writing more nuanced and resonant personal narratives. How can we situate our stories in larger social, political, and cultural spheres? How might we use research, journalism, or lyric association to show the connections held within our own stories? By the end of this course, participants will have greater fluency with blending various types of nonfiction and a more thorough understanding of the possibilities for opening up their personal narratives. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss a longer piece of their own work and read each other’s; while much of that discussion will focus on feedback for these pieces, we will also talk about how to grow and sustain communities of like-minded (and sometimes not like-minded!) readers. Participants will also have the option of completing short daily writing assignments that model the various strategies of approaching a narrative and are based upon the authors we read, such as Zadie Smith, Emily Maloney, Elena Passarello, and Lidia Yuknavitch. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week.

This workshop is designed for students writing their first novel (or short story) or those who are starting the next one. Purposefully crafted for the beginner or intermediate writer, Novel Bootcamp is created specifically for writers who are fuzzy about where to begin, what do to next, and how to develop a new story from scratch. Curriculum centers mainly around engaging writing prompts to help you generate ideas with results that will surprise you. Consider the writing prompts as idea-incubators for locating the emotional truth in your story. The goal is to find your voice, develop characters, zero in on theme and invent your story—whether that means uncovering your structure or developing the tools to build your fictional world. Each class will include in-class writing, workshopping the results, and craft talks on subjects like how to write believable dialogue, the elements of theme, and tips for staying the course. All fiction genres (literary, contemporary, speculative) and forms (novel, novella, short story, micro stories) are welcome. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week.

Good storytelling requires a sure touch with narration, characterization, and dialogue. None of these ingredients can be neglected. But when do you use which? How do you find the right balance? This is a nuts-and-bolts craft workshop for fiction writers of all levels. Novelists, short story writers, and flash aficionados are all welcome. We’ll compare the merits of first-person and third-person narration, and the extra risks of using the second person. We’ll also dissect characterization techniques and the question of empathy. Does your main character have to be “likeable”? What is “likeable” anyway? We’ll also ask questions about dialogue, idiolect, and profanity (yes, swearing is an artful activity!). We’ll reflect on 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? During the week, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on what you produce; AND, for participants who desire it, we will workshop writing you bring from home. (This last activity is not obligatory, but it is encouraged.) I’ll also supply reading materials from eminent writers to illustrate key issues. Whether you’re an experienced writer or a newbie, whether you’re in the process of revision or haven’t finished your first draft, you will leave this workshop with a keener appreciation of the tools at your disposal and how they might serve your writing. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.

In this course we will look at what makes a satisfying mystery novel, and the relationship successful mysteries build with their audience. While we often consider mysteries to be a mastery of puzzle and plot, we will examine the propulsive power of character-driven action vs. situational plot. We’ll explore the processes of major mystery writers including classic, golden age, noir, and modern literary authors. Throughout the week, we will write a series of exercises to build our own versions of key elements of the mystery genre, and workshop new writing. This course is also a deep dive into the novelist’s dilemma of how much to know before you begin writing. How do we kindle our creativity, know where we are going and avoid frustration, especially in knowing what happens next? The mystery genre is an excellent container to explore the conditions of the writing process and find our own balance of structure and play, while examining suspense vs. tension and the possibilities of upending both our and the audience’s expectations. Participants can expect to leave this course with an expansive understanding of the mystery genre, nourishing tools to support their writing process, and a personal plan of how to develop and draft their own mystery novel. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week.

Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book tells the seemingly simple story of two characters passing a single season on a small island, and yet writers ranging from Ali Smith to Phillip Pullman to Kathryn Davis have praised the novel’s “magnitude” and “genius,” and have suggested that it “comes to represent the whole universe.” In this generative prose workshop, we will use Johnson’s deceptively minimal masterpiece as a touchstone as we begin to assemble our own summer books from the unique driftwood floating in our memories and imaginations. How might a whole world—or at least a whole book—be constructed out of these discrete pieces? What locations, seasons, or characters from our own imagined or actual experiences might intersect—or bump surprisingly against one another—to yield a sustained and sustaining longer work? What narrative and expressive possibilities might be afforded by dispensing with causal plot structures, and by imagining a book not as a propulsive progression but as a more mysterious container for discontinuous but coalescing material? We will endeavor to answer such questions by collaboratively reading the crystalline, yet obscurely connected, components that comprise Johnson’s novel, alongside selections from other books built out of small prose blocks by writers like Sei Shōnagon, Giada Scodellaro, Maggie Nelson, and Sigrid Nunez. Just as crucially, we will explore the novelistic potential of the vignette by responding to writing prompts inspired by all we’ve discussed and discovered. By the end of the week, each student should expect to have started their own [Iowa] Summer [Writing Festival] Book! Lovers of literature (and summer!) at all levels of experience are welcome. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts.

This weeklong workshop is intended for anyone whose writing project involves bringing the past to life, whether it’s your own life, the life of family members, or the life and times of fully fictional characters. Some topics we’ll consider: What’s the best way to conduct your research, then incorporate that research into your narrative? How do you animate the past? If you’re writing memoir and the significant events have already happened, how do you make them feel fresh for the reader? What are some writerly tricks when writing historical prose, and what are some common pitfalls to avoid? Workshop members are expected to arrive with a 5- to 10-page sample of their writing project, which the group will consider. We’ll also generate new work using directed writing prompts. Instructor Eric Goodman’s eight book, Mother of Bourbon, a historical novel, will be published in April 2025. His sixth book, Cuppy and Stew (2020), combined historical fiction and faux memoir, so he’s spent considerable time in the past five years wrestling the past onto the page. In this first-time workshop, he’ll pass on what’s he learned. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.

Why do we avoid certain topics in our writing? “Oh, I could never write about _____!” Even with the permission of storytelling, many of us avoid writing the truth—our truth. The truth can be scary. So we write about something else, something safe, while our unwritten words follow us across our days like a troubling shadow. In this all-genre workshop, we will enter the Danger Zone. If these words make your heart flutter, perhaps it is the right moment for you to take this journey. It will take trust, courage, and most of all support—from one another in our summer community, and from the examples we’ll read by other brave writers who have gone there before us. Do you have a manuscript underway, and can’t shake the feeling of circling your Danger Zone, round and round, remaining on the outside of your own writing and uncertain how to enter? We will workshop your pages and, together, look for openings. (Even a gentle, tiny crack can be enough to break the spell.) Do you hunger to write something true about your life but have told yourself, “I’m not ready”? Together, we will gently (there’s that word again) follow in-class prompts to translate your creative longing into the start of a new draft. This workshop is designed to be useful to, and respectful of, wherever you are in your process. By the end of our session, which is exuberantly open to all writers at any stage in a writing life, we will grow our confidence and lessen the sense of danger, coaxing into the light not just pages but a process we can build upon, one sentence at a time. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.

For anyone who dreams about writing the movie they want to see—here’s your opportunity. Join award-winning screenwriter, producer, and story consultant Kat O’Brien in this weeklong workshop to unlock the cinematic potential of your storytelling. Whether you’re a novelist, memoirist, journalist, poet, or playwright curious about translating your storytelling skills to film, this course will help you navigate the art and craft of screenwriting while staying true to your unique voice. For writers new to screenwriting and seasoned pros alike, this course will be tailored to guide you through your unique process of bridging that gap between the movie in your mind and the screenplay on the page. This workshop is an opportunity for writers of all genres and levels of experience to develop and kickstart a draft of a feature-length screenplay. Bring a work in progress to refine or start from scratch and generate something new. Each session will combine lecture, discussion, interactive activities, time to write, and workshops delivering writer-centered feedback and first impressions on writing produced in class. Day one, we’ll start by pitching our ideas for new or existing feature stories. During our subsequent daily sessions, we’ll develop feature-length outlines, learn the guidelines of industry-standard screenplay format, and draft and table-read at least 10 pages of a feature film screenplay that will set you up to write a full-length feature on your own schedule. Whether you’re new to screenwriting or looking to refine your screenwriting craft, this weeklong intensive will offer a dynamic, supportive, structured environment to help you realize your ideas from pitch to page to screen at a pace that works for you, mindful of your unique creative bandwidth. Takeaways: Create professional pitch materials such as loglines, synopses, and one-pagers. Develop a feature-length, detailed step-outline. Draft and receive feedback on at least 10 pages of a feature screenplay that will set you up to finish the script on your own schedule In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week; workshop writing you bring from home.