Iowa Writers' Workshop

She's such a talented writer that people are like, oh, queen of the beach read, whatever.

She went to Iowa Writers Workshop.

She has all the chops in the world.

There's no such thing as just a beach read, not when it comes to Ellen Hildebrandt.

I just remember meeting you there when we were, you know, honeymooning.

And then you then went on to the Iowa Writers Workshop.

But the point is that, you know, we go back a ways and I associate you with Paris because that was my first knowledge of you.

And it's interesting to me that you have this character in Ivan... who was there as a young man and wants to get back to it and wants especially to share it with Nina, wants to show her that city.

They're all men, by the way, but then that's what it would have been like at Oxford in the 1940s.

The temptation, I think, for the modern researcher, the modern critic, looking at the inklings, you know, sort of sitting there in Lewis's room, drinking beer and reading their manuscripts, is to assume that they were a kind of modern version, a kind of bygone version of the Iowa Writers' Workshop or something like that, which, of course, they weren't at all.

You know, these were very eccentric, highly intelligent men, sometimes some of whom had very strong opinions about what the others were up to.

some of whom obviously had specialist knowledge, which didn't extend to knowing anything about what their contemporaries were up to.

And then I reread it again.

When I did my MFA in creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop 20 years after I graduated from college, like I had a whole other life.

And so I reread it again when I was doing my MFA.

And then it was like a revelation because then the tragedy wasn't that he didn't end up with Daisy.

It's like writing.

You can get an MFA from Iowa Writers Workshop, but you're not going to have the field to write to college.

you know, it's different.

It's just a feeling.

And so I didn't go strictly chronologically, although I mostly did.

But then later I went to Iowa Writers Workshop.

And for writers here, you know, it's a fantastic place.

Unfortunately, they do not have the summer workshops anymore.

I always tell students that every public university is great at at least one thing.

So my example is always because I like to write the University of Iowa, right? So University of Iowa has the Iowa Writers Workshop, which is probably the best school of writing in the country, if not the world.

It's Iowa.

Like it's not a place people are going to think of in this regard, but like that is a thing they are unbelievably good at.

Right away, under Kenyon's purview, Iowa City's City of Literature nonprofit expanded its reach, taking over the Iowa City Book Festival, featuring authors from around the world, and launching a one-book, two-book children's festival.

The 18th Annual Book Festival is underway this week in Iowa City with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, who taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for 25 years before retiring, speaking at 7 p.m. today in McBride Hall Auditorium on the University of Iowa campus.

The nonprofit, with its Paul Ingle Annual Literary Prize, named after the founder of the Iowa's famed Writers' Workshop and other youth writing honors, readings, and contests, has raised the city's writing profile over the years while encouraging creation at a grassroots level.

And recently, Iowa City's UNESCO City of Literature has come full circle by playing a larger role in supporting the UI's International Writing Program, which recently lost nearly $1 million in federal grants it had relied on since its founding in 1967.

She has absolutely no interest.

She taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for years, so that was how she stayed in with contemporary writing, but she doesn't really like contemporary fiction very much, so I'm safe that way.

Although, when she reads it, she'll recognize nothing of herself.

Mm-hmm.