List of Iowa Writers' Workshop people
Encyclopedia
The Program in Creative Writing, more commonly known as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...

 in Iowa City
Iowa City, Iowa
Iowa City is a city in Johnson County, State of Iowa. As of the 2010 Census, the city had a total population of about 67,862, making it the sixth-largest city in the state. Iowa City is the county seat of Johnson County and home to the University of Iowa...

, Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

 is a graduate-level creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

 program in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

The program began in 1936, with the gathering together of poets and fiction writers under the direction of Wilbur Schramm
Wilbur Schramm
Wilbur Lang Schramm is sometimes called the "father of communication studies," and had a great influence on the development of communication research in the United States, and the establishing of departments of communication studies in US universities.Schramm was born in Marietta, Ohio...

. Graduates earn a Master of Fine Arts
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...

 in English; Iowa was the first program in the country to offer this degree.

The University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop has 28 affiliated Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

s earned by various faculty and graduates, and over 40 attributed to graduates and faculty of The University of Iowa.

Writers' Workshop graduates have produced 16 Pulitzer Prizes since 1947.

Notable alumni

Notable alumni of the program include:

  • Daniel Alarcon
    Daniel Alarcón
    Daniel Alarcón is an author who lives in Oakland, California; he has been a the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College and a Visiting Writer at California College of the Arts...

  • Antler
    Antler (poet)
    Antler is an American poet who lives in Wisconsin.Among other honors, Antler received the Whitman Prize from the Walt Whitman Association, given to the poet "whose contribution best reveals the continuing presence of Walt Whitman in American poetry," in 1985. Antler also was awarded the Witter...

     (did not graduate)
  • Chris Adrian
    Chris Adrian
    Chris Adrian is an American author. Adrian's writing styles in short stories vary a great deal, from modernist realism to pronounced lyrical allegory. His novels both tend toward surrealism, having mostly realistic characters experience fantastic circumstances. He has written three novels: Gob's...

  • Benjamin Anastas
    Benjamin Anastas
    Benjamin Anastas is an American novelist, journalist and critic born in Gloucester, Massachusetts.Anastas started publishing his short fiction while a graduate student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop...

  • Jon Anderson
    Jon Anderson (poet)
    Jon Victor Anderson was an American poet.Anderson's first book, Looking for Jonathan, was an inaugural selection of the Pitt Poetry Series of the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1967...

  • Robert Antoni
    Robert Antoni
    Robert Antoni is a West Indian writer who was awarded the 1999 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by The Paris Review for "My Grandmother's Tale of How Crab-o Lost His Head".- Background :...

  • Nick Arvin
    Nick Arvin
    Nick Arvin is an American engineer and writer. Born in North Carolina, he was raised in Michigan, and graduated from the University of Michigan and Stanford University with degrees in mechanical engineering, and from the Iowa Writers' Workshop...

  • Reza Aslan
    Reza Aslan
    Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American activist, a nationally acclaimed writer of religions. He is on the faculty at the University of California, Riverside, and is a contributing editor for The Daily Beast...

  • Kirsten Bakis
    Kirsten Bakis
    -Life:Bakis was raised in Westchester County, New York, and graduated from New York University in 1990. She is a recipient of a Teaching/Writing Fellowship from the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, a grant from the Michener/Copernicus Society of America....

  • Tom Barbash
    Tom Barbash
    Tom Barbash is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction, educator and critic. He is the author of the novel The Last Good Chance and the bestselling nonfiction work On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick & 9/11: A Story of Loss & Renewal...

  • Emily Barton
    Emily Barton
    Emily Barton is an American novelist, critic, and academic. She is the author of two novels: The Testament of Yves Gundron and Brookland .-Background and education:...

  • Dan Beachy-Quick
    Dan Beachy-Quick
    Dan Beachy-Quick is an American poet, writer, and critic. He is the author of four collections of poems, most recently, Circle's Apprentice , and A Whaler’s Dictionary , a collection of essays about Moby Dick. His honors include a Lannan Foundation Residency.His poems have appeared widely in...

  • Richard Bausch
    Richard Bausch
    Richard Bausch is an American novelist and short story writer, and Moss Chair of Excellence in English at the University of Memphis. He has written eleven novels, eight short story collections, and one volume of poetry and prose....

  • Marvin Bell
    Marvin Bell
    Marvin Bell is an American poet and teacher who was the first Poet Laureate of the State of Iowa.Bell was born in New York City and raised in Center Moriches, Long Island...

  • Karen Bender
    Karen Bender
    -Biography:Karen E. Bender grew up in Los Angeles, and currently lives in North Carolina with her husband, novelist Robert Anthony Siegel, and their two children. She is the author of the novel Like Normal People ....

  • Suzanne Berne
    Suzanne Berne
    Suzanne Berne is an American novelist known for her foreboding character studies involving unexpected domestic and psychological drama in bucolic suburban settings.-Life:...

  • Clark Blaise
    Clark Blaise
    Clark Blaise, OC is a Canadian author.Born in Fargo, North Dakota, he currently lives in San Francisco, California. He has been married since 1963 to writer Bharati Mukherjee. They have two sons. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, Blaise was also the director of...

  • Brett Ellen Block
    Brett Ellen Block
    -Life:Block was born and raised in Summit, New Jersey. She received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, where she was awarded the Hopwood and Haugh Prizes for Fiction Writing...

  • Robert Bly
    Robert Bly
    Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...

  • T. Coraghessan Boyle
    T. Coraghessan Boyle
    Tom Coraghessan Boyle is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. Since the mid 1970s, he has published twelve novels and more than 100 short stories...

  • Kevin Brockmeier
    Kevin Brockmeier
    Kevin John Brockmeier is an American writer of fantasy and literary fiction. His short stories have been printed in numerous publications and he has published two collections of stories, two children's novels, and two fantasy novels...

  • Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
    Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
    Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is an American writer.She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter and teaches writing and literature at UC San Diego. Bynum is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop...

  • Bruce Brooks
    Bruce Brooks
    Bruce Brooks is an American author of young adult and children's literature. - Background :Brooks, born in Richmond, Virginia, lived most of his young life in North Carolina as a result of parental divorce. Brooks credits moving around multiple times between the two locations with making him a...

  • Suzanne Buffam
    Suzanne Buffam
    Suzanne Buffam is a Canadian poet, author of two collections of poetry. Her first, Past Imperfect , won the Gerald Lampert Award in 2006. Her second, The Irrationalist , was shortlisted for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize...

  • Sara Caldwell
    Sara Caldwell
    Sara Caldwell is an American author and screenwriter/filmmaker. She was founder and producer/writer of Amphion Productions from 1991-2006 and is currently a co-producer/writer for House of Gorey Productions.The daughter of writer Robert Coover, and Spanish needlepoint artist Pilar Sans Coover,...

  • Ethan Canin
    Ethan Canin
    Ethan Andrew Canin is an American author, educator, and physician. He is a member of the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa....

  • Alexander Chee
    Alexander Chee
    Alexander Chee is an American fiction writer, poet, journalist and reviewer.Born in Rhode Island, he spent his childhood in South Korea, Kauai, Truk, Guam and Maine...

  • Justin Cronin
  • Philip Dacey
  • Raymond Carver
    Raymond Carver
    Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....

     (did not graduate)
  • John Casey
    John Casey (novelist)
    John D. Casey is an American novelist and translator.-Life:Casey went to school at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa....

  • Lan Samantha Chang
    Lan Samantha Chang
    Lan Samantha Chang , born 1965, is an American writer of novels and short stories. She is Professor of English at the University of Iowa and Director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop- Life and career :...

  • Susan Taylor Chehak
  • Kate Christensen
    Kate Christensen
    Kate Christensen is an American novelist. She won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for her fourth novel, The Great Man, about a painter and the three women in his life. Her previous novels are In the Drink , Jeremy Thrane , and The Epicure's Lament...

  • Sandra Cisneros
    Sandra Cisneros
    Sandra Cisneros is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street and her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories...

  • Joshua Clover
    Joshua Clover
    Joshua Clover is a poet, critic, journalist and author. He has appeared in three editions of Best American Poetry, is a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, and recipient of an individual grant from the NEA; his first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, received the Walt Whitman Award from the...

  • Arda Collins
    Arda Collins
    -Life:Collins was an intern, working up to research assistant, and then assistant director, of Public television documentaries, from 1997-2003.She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop where she was a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow....

  • Peter Cooley
    Peter Cooley
    Peter Cooley is an American poet and Professor of English in the Department of English at Tulane University. He also directs Tulane’s Creative Writing Program...

  • Jane Cooper
    Jane Cooper
    -Life and career:Cooper was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, spent her early childhood in Jacksonville, Florida, and then moved with her family to Princeton in the mid-1930s. She attended Vassar College from 1942 to 1944, and earned a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1946. In 1953–54...

  • Henri Coulette
    Henri Coulette
    Henri Coulette was an American poet and educator. His first book, The War of the Secret Agents and Other Poems , was greeted with acclaim and won the Lamont Poetry Prize...

  • Dennis Covington
    Dennis Covington
    Dennis Covington is an American writer. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, studied fiction writing and earned a BA degree from the University of Virginia, then served in the U.S. Army. He earned an MFA in the early 1970s, from the Iowa Writers' Workshop studying under Raymond Carver. He taught...

  • Peter Craig
    Peter Craig
    Peter Craig is an American novelist and screenwriter known for his darkly comic novels of imploding father-child relationships.-Novels:...

  • Mary Crow
    Mary Crow
    Mary Crow is an American poet, translator, professor, and the current poet laureate of Colorado. She is the author of two collections of poetry, three chapbooks and five translations....

  • Michael Cunningham
    Michael Cunningham
    Michael Cunningham is an American writer, best known for his 1998 novel The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999.-Early life and education:...

  • Robert Dana
    Robert Dana
    -External links:Links to poems*, poetry by Robert Dana including "Heat", "A Short History of the Middle West", and "Beach Attitudes" on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor*, poetry by Robert Dana including the poem "Rapture" on Anhinga Press....

  • Charles D'Ambrosio
    Charles D'Ambrosio
    -Life:D'Ambrosio grew up in Seattle, Washington, and now lives in Portland, Oregon. He attended Oberlin College and graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he has been a visiting faculty member...

  • Terry Davis
    Terry Davis (author)
    Terry Davis is an American novelist who lives near Spokane, Washington, and is a professor emeritus of English at Minnesota State University, Mankato , where he taught Creative writing – fiction and screenwriting – as well as adolescent literature...

  • William Dickey
    William Dickey (poet)
    William Hobart Dickey was an American poet and professor of English and creative writing at San Francisco State University. He authored 15 books of poetry over a career that lasted three and a half decades....

  • Stephen Dobyns
    Stephen Dobyns
    Stephen J. Dobyns is an American poet and novelist born in Orange, New Jersey, and residing in Westerly, RI.-Life:Was born on February 19, 1941 in Orange, New Jersey to Lester L., a minister, and Barbara Johnston...

  • Doug Dorst
  • Rita Dove
    Rita Dove
    Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and author. From 1993-1995 she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now popularly known as "U.S. Poet Laureate"...

  • Norman Dubie
    Norman Dubie
    Norman Dubie is an American poet.-Life:He is the author of more than eighteen books, often assuming historical personae in his works...

  • Andre Dubus
    Andre Dubus
    Andre Dubus, II was an American short story writer, essayist, and autobiographer. Dubus is recognized as one of the most prolific American short-story writers in the 20th century.-Early life and education:...

  • Michael Dumanis
    Michael Dumanis
    Michael Dumanis is an American poet, professor, and editor of poetry.-Works:Dumanis’s first collection of poetry, My Soviet Union , won the 2006 Juniper Prize for Poetry. Other works have appeared in literary journals, including Denver Quarterly, H.O.W...

  • Stuart Dybek
    Stuart Dybek
    -Personal life:Dybek was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Chicago's Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dybek graduated from St. Rita of Cascia High School in 1959...

  • Kim Edwards
    Kim Edwards
    Kim Edwards is an American author and educator. Her first novel, The Memory Keeper's Daughter , is a New York Times Bestseller, and was honored with the Sainsbury's Popular Fiction Award at the 2008 British Book Awards....

  • Nathan Englander
    Nathan Englander
    Nathan Englander is a Jewish-American author born in Long Island, NY in 1970. He wrote the short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1999...

  • Paul Engle
    Paul Engle
    Paul Engle , noted American poet, editor, teacher, literary critic, novelist, and playwright. He is perhaps best remembered as the long-time director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and as founder of the International Writing Program , both at the University of Iowa.-Life:Engle is often mistakenly...

  • Steven Erikson
    Steven Erikson
    Steven Erikson is the pseudonym of Steve Rune Lundin, a Canadian novelist, who was educated and trained as both an archaeologist and anthropologist....

  • Joe Frank
    Joe Frank
    Joe Frank is an American radio personality, known best for his often philosophical, humorous, surrealist, and sometimes absurd monologues and radio dramas.-Early life:...

  • Eugene K. Garber
  • John Gardner
  • Virginia Gilbert
  • Robert Girardi
    Robert Girardi
    Robert Girardi is an American author, writing on the themes of mystery or detective fiction, and religion, like an American Graham Greene, and loser narrator, like Sam Lipsyte....

  • André Girod
  • Diane Glancy
    Diane Glancy
    Diane Glancy was born in 1941 in Kansas City, Missouri. She is a Cherokee poet, author and playwright. Glancy was awarded a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Missouri in 1964, then later continued her education at the University of Central Oklahoma, earning her a Masters degree in English...

  • Gail Godwin
    Gail Godwin
    Gail Kathleen Godwin is an American novelist and short story writer. She has published one non-fiction work, two collections of short stories, and eleven novels, three of which have been nominated for the National Book Award and five of which have made the New York Times Bestseller List.Godwin was...

  • Albert Goldbarth
    Albert Goldbarth
    Albert Goldbarth is an American poet born January 31, 1948 in Chicago. He is known for his prolific production, his gregarious tone, his eclectic interests and his distinctive 'talky' style. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and won the National Book Critics Circle award in 1991 and 2001, the only...

  • Jorie Graham
    Jorie Graham
    Jorie Graham is an American poet. The U.S. Poetry Foundation suggests "She is perhaps the most celebrated poet of the American post-war generation". She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position...

  • Lucy Grealy
    Lucy Grealy
    Lucinda Margaret Grealy was an American poet and memoirist who wrote Autobiography of a Face in 1994. This critically acclaimed book describes her childhood and early adolescence experience with cancer of the jaw, which left her with some facial disfigurement...

  • Robin Green
  • Debora Greger
    Debora Greger
    Debora Greger is an award-winning American poet as well as a visual artist.She was raised in Richland, Washington....

  • Linda Gregerson
    Linda Gregerson
    Linda Gregerson is an American poet and member of faculty at the University of Michigan .-Life:Linda Gregerson received a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1971, an M.A. from Northwestern University, an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, and her Ph.D. from Stanford University...

  • Benjamin Gocker
  • Dan Guenther
    Dan Guenther
    Dan Guenther, born in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1944, is an American writer. A graduate of Coe College, he has a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps...

  • Allan Gurganus
    Allan Gurganus
    Allan Gurganus is an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist whose work is often influenced by and set in his native North Carolina. His writing has been compared to the work of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, who also were identified with the American South.-Biography: Gurganus was...

  • Patricia Hampl
    Patricia Hampl
    Patricia Hampl is an American memoirist, writer, lecturer, and educator. She is a recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and is one of the founding members of the Loft Literary Center.-Life:Hampl was...

  • Jennifer Haigh
    Jennifer Haigh
    Jennifer Haigh is an American novelist and short story writer.She was born in Barnesboro, a Western Pennsylvania coal town 85 miles northeast of Pittsburgh in Cambria County. She attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers'...

  • Joe Haldeman
    Joe Haldeman
    Joe William Haldeman is an American science fiction author.-Life :Haldeman was born June 9, 1943 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His family traveled and he lived in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Bethesda, Maryland and Anchorage, Alaska as a child. Haldeman married Mary Gay Potter, known...

  • Douglas Kent Hall
    Douglas Kent Hall
    Douglas Kent Hall was an American writer and photographer. Hall was a fine art photographer and writer of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, essays, and screenplays...

  • Oakley Hall
    Oakley Hall
    Oakley Maxwell Hall was an American novelist. He was born in San Diego, California, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and served in the Marines during World War II. Some of his mysteries were published under the pen names "O.M...

  • Ron Hansen
    Ron Hansen (novelist)
    Ron Hansen is an American novelist, essayist, and professor.-Biography:Hansen was born in Omaha, Nebraska, attended a Jesuit high school, Creighton Preparatory School and earned a Bachelor's degree in English from Creighton University in Omaha in 1970. Following military service, he earned an M.F.A...

  • Colin Harrison
  • Kathryn Harrison
    Kathryn Harrison
    Kathryn Harrison is an American author.-Background and education:Harrison's maternal grandparents raised her in Los Angeles, California...

  • Kent Haruf
    Kent Haruf
    Kent Haruf is an award-winning American novelist.-Life:Haruf was born in Pueblo, Colorado, the son of a Methodist minister...

  • Matthea Harvey
    Matthea Harvey
    Matthea Harvey is a contemporary American poet, writer and professor. She has published three collections, most recently, Modern Life , which earned her the 2009 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award, and a New York Times Notable Book...

  • Adam Haslett
    Adam Haslett
    Adam Haslett is an American fiction writer. He was born in Kingston, Massachusetts and grew up in Oxfordshire, England, and Wellesley, Massachusetts. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College , the University of Iowa , and Yale Law School . He has been a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers'...

  • Daniel Hecht
    Daniel Hecht
    Daniel Hecht is an American novelist who has written Skull Session , The Babel Effect , Puppets , and is also known for the Cree Black series which contains City of Masks , Land of Echoes , and Bones of the Barbary Coast...

  • Elin Hilderbrand
    Elin Hilderbrand
    Elin Hilderbrand is an American writer of Summer beach read romance novels. Hildebrand's novels have all been set on and around Nantucket Island where she lives with her husband and three children...

  • Brenda Hillman
    Brenda Hillman
    Brenda Hillman , is an American poet. She was educated at Pomona College, and received her M.F.A. at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California...

  • A.M. Homes
  • Cathy Park Hong
    Cathy Park Hong
    Cathy Park Hong is an American writer born in Los Angeles, California, USA. Much of her work includes mixed language and serialized narrative.-Life:She is a graduate of Oberlin College and has an MFA from Iowa Writers Workshop...

  • Jay Hopler
    Jay Hopler
    -Biography:He graduated from Purdue University , The Iowa Writers’ Workshop , The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and New York University .His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including American Poetry Review, The...

  • James Hynes
    James Hynes
    James Hynes is an American novelist. He was born in Okemos, Michigan, and grew up in Big Rapids, Michigan. He lived for many years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and currently resides in Austin, Texas, where he has taught creative writing at the University of Texas...

  • John Irving
    John Irving
    John Winslow Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978...

  • Jeremy Jackson
    Jeremy Jackson (author)
    Jeremy Jackson is an American author. He was born in 1973 in Ohio, grew up on a farm in Missouri, and currently lives in Iowa City, Iowa. He is a graduate of Vassar College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa...

  • Mark Jarman
    Mark Jarman
    Mark F. Jarman is an American poet and critic often identified with the New Narrative branch of the New Formalism; he was co-editor with Robert McDowell of The Reaper throughout the 1980s...

  • Gish Jen
    Gish Jen
    Gish Jen is a contemporary American writer.-Background:...

  • Denis Johnson
    Denis Johnson
    Denis Hale Johnson is an American author who is known for his short-story collection Jesus' Son and his novel Tree of Smoke , which won the National Book Award. He also writes plays, poetry and non-fiction.- Biography :...

  • Kimberly Johnson
    Kimberly Johnson
    -Life:Johnson was raised in West Jordan, Utah. She earned her MA in 1995 from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, her MFA in 1997 Iowa Writers' Workshop, and a PhD in 2003 from University of California, Berkeley....

  • Thom Jones
    Thom Jones
    Thom Jones is an American writer, primarily of short stories.-Biography:Jones was raised in Aurora, Illinois, and attended the University of Hawaii, where he played catcher on the baseball team...

  • Donald Justice
    Donald Justice
    Donald Justice was an American poet and teacher of writing. In summing up Justice's career, David Orr has written, "In most ways, Justice was no different from any number of solid, quiet older writers devoted to traditional short poems. But he was different in one important sense: sometimes his...

  • Claudia Keelan
    Claudia Keelan
    -Life:Keelan, who was born in Anaheim, California, is a graduate of Humboldt State University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Missing Her , and has published poems widely in magazines and journals, including The American Poetry Review,...

  • Steve Kistulentz
    Steve Kistulentz
    Steve Kistulentz is an American poet and fiction writer. He is currently an assistant professor of English at ]] in Jackson, MS....

  • Joanna Klink
    Joanna Klink
    Joanna Klink is an American poet. Her most recent poetry collection is Raptus , and her poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including Chicago Review and Boston Review. She was born in Iowa City, Iowa. She received her M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and...

  • W.P. Kinsella
  • Suji Kwock Kim
    Suji Kwock Kim
    -Life:She graduated from Yale College; the Iowa Writers' Workshop; Seoul National University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar; and Stanford University, where she was a Stegner Fellow....

  • William Kittredge
    William Kittredge
    William Kittredge is an American writer from Oregon, United States. He was born in Portland, Oregon, and grew up on a ranch in Southeastern Oregon's Warner Valley in Lake County where he attended school in Adel, Oregon, and later would attend high school in California and Oregon...

  • Sana Krasikov
    Sana Krasikov
    -Life:She grew up in the Republic of Georgia, as well as the United States. She graduated from Iowa Writer’s Workshop,Her work appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Virginia Quarterly, Epoch, and Zoetrope.-Works:...

  • Robert Lacy
    Robert Lacy
    Robert Lacy is an American writer, of short stories. He was born and raised in East Texas, and served in the United States Marines. He graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was a student of Richard Yates. He lives in Medicine Lake, Minnesota....

  • William Lashner
    William Lashner
    William Lashner , is an American novelist who formerly worked as a trial lawyer. He is a graduate of NYU School of Law and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. He has served as trial attorney in the Criminal Division of the United States Justice Department...

  • Zachary Lazar
    Zachary Lazar
    Zachary Lazar is an American novelist. Lazar was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He earned an A.B. degree in Comparative Literature from Brown University and M.F.A from the University of Iowa Iowa Writer's Workshop ....

  • Nam Le
    Nam Le (writer)
    Nam Le is a Vietnamese-born Australian writer, who won the Dylan Thomas Prize for his book The Boat, a collection of short stories...

  • Katy Lederer
    Katy Lederer
    Katherine "Katy" Lederer is an American poet and author of the memoir Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers.Lederer is the daughter of bestselling non-fiction author Richard Lederer and the sister of world-class poker players Howard Lederer and Annie Duke. She graduated from St...

  • Philip Levine
    Philip Levine (poet)
    Philip Levine is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet best known for his poems about working-class Detroit. He taught for over thirty years at the English Department of California State University, Fresno and held teaching positions at other universities as well...

  • Larry Levis
    Larry Levis
    Larry Patrick Levis was an American poet.-Youth and Education:Larry Levis was born the son of a grape grower; he grew up driving a tractor, picking grapes, and pruning vines of Selma, California, a small fruit-growing town in the San Joaquin Valley...

  • Yiyun Li
    Yiyun Li
    Yiyun Li is a Chinese American writer. Her debut short story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers won the 2005 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and her second collection Gold Boy, Emerald Girl was shortlisted for the same award...

  • Frannie Lindsay
    Frannie Lindsay
    Frannie Lindsay is an American poet. She is author of three poetry collections, most recently, Mayweed . Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the MacDowell and Millay Colonies, and Yaddo...

  • Paul Lisicky
    Paul Lisicky
    -Biography:Paul Lisicky grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He earned both Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in English from Rutgers University, then received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. While a student at Iowa, he won a National...

  • William Logan
    William Logan (poet)
    William Logan is an American poet, critic and scholar.-Life:Logan was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to W. Donald Logan, Jr. and Nancy Damon Logan. He lives in Gainesville, Florida and Cambridge, England with his wife, the poet and artist, Debora Greger...

  • David Wong Louie
    David Wong Louie
    David Wong Louie is an American writer of novels and short stories.- Literary career :He received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa in 1981 and a B.A. from Vassar College in 1977...

  • Stephen Lovely
    Stephen Lovely
    Stephen Lovely is an American author best known for his novel Irreplaceable.A graduate of Kenyon College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Lovely is the director of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.Lovely won a Dana Award in 2004.-External links:* *....

  • Thomas Lux
    Thomas Lux
    -Biography:Thomas Lux was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, son of a milkman and a Sears & Roebuck switchboard operator, neither of whom graduated from high school. Lux was raised in Massachusetts on a dairy farm. He was, according to those who knew him in high school, very good at baseball,...

  • Haki R. Madhubuti
    Haki R. Madhubuti
    Haki R. Madhubuti is a renowned African-American author, educator, and poet. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and served in the U.S...

  • Dora Malech
    Dora Malech
    Dora Malech is an American poet.Malech’s first full-length collection of poetry, Shore Ordered Ocean, was published in 2009 by the Waywiser Press. The Cleveland State University Poetry Center published her second collection, Say So, in 2010....

  • Sarah Manguso
    Sarah Manguso
    Sarah Manguso is an American writer and poet born in Massachusetts in 1974. In 2007, she was awarded the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship in literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters...

  • Cate Marvin
    Cate Marvin
    -Life:She graduated from Marlboro College, University of Houston, University of Iowa, and University of Cincinnati with a Ph.D.She teaches at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York and in spring 2010 will be teaching at Columbia University....

  • Aaron McCollough
    Aaron McCollough
    -Life and career:Aaron McCollough was born in 1971 in Columbus, Ohio and raised in Tennessee. He has a BA from the University of the South , an MA in English Literature from North Carolina State University , an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop , as well as an MA and PhD in...

  • Elizabeth McCracken
    Elizabeth McCracken
    Elizabeth McCracken is an American author.McCracken, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, graduated from Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts, earned a B.A. and M.A. in English from Boston University, an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, and...

  • Shane McCrae
    Shane McCrae
    Shane McCrae is an American poet. He is the author of the poetry collection Mule and the recipient of a 2011 Whiting Writers' Award...

  • Tom McHale
  • Robin Metz
  • David Milch
    David Milch
    David S. Milch is an American writer and producer of television series. He has created several television shows, including NYPD Blue and Deadwood.-Biography:...

  • Leslie Adrienne Miller
    Leslie Adrienne Miller
    Leslie Adrienne Miller is the author of five collections of poems.Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, Miller holds a B.A. from Stephens College, an M.A. from the University of Missouri, and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a Ph.D...

  • Dow Mossman
    Dow Mossman
    Dow Mossman, born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is an American writer.Mossman studied at Coe College for two years, finished college at the University of Iowa and received his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1969. His novel, The Stones of Summer, was published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1972 and...

  • Bharati Mukherjee
    Bharati Mukherjee
    Bharati Mukherjee is an award-winning Indian-born American writer. She is currently a professor in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley.-Background:...

  • John Murray (Australian novelist)
    John Murray (Australian novelist)
    John Murray is an Australian epidemologist, and writer.-Life:In 1985, Murray received his medical degree. He received a master's of public health from Johns Hopkins University. He went on to the Centers for Disease Control's Epidemic Intelligence Service...

  • Sena Jeter Naslund
  • Thisbe Nissen
  • Alice Notley
    Alice Notley
    Alice Notley is an American poet. She was born in Bisbee, Arizona and grew up in Needles, California. She received a B.A. from Barnard College in 1967 and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1969. She married poet Ted Berrigan in 1972, with whom she was active in...

  • Geoffrey Nutter
    Geoffrey Nutter
    Geoffrey Nutter is an American poet, born in Sacramento and based in New York. He is the author of three collections of poetry, including A Summer Evening , Water's Leaves & Other Poems , and Christopher Sunset...

  • Flannery O'Connor
    Flannery O'Connor
    Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...

  • Thomas O'Malley
    Thomas O'Malley (writer)
    -Life:He grew up in Ireland and England, but was educated in the United States. He attended the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.In 2006, he read at Amherst College.He teaches at Dartmouth College....

  • Chris Offutt
    Chris Offutt
    Christopher John "Chris" Offutt is an American writer.The son of author Andrew J. Offutt, Chris Offutt grew up in a small former mining community in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Kentucky. He quit high school to join the army, but failed the physical...

  • Lance Olsen
    Lance Olsen
    - Biography :Lance Olsen received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison , an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop , and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia...

  • Peter Orner
    Peter Orner
    Peter Orner is an American writer of fiction. He is the author of the novels Love and Shame and Love and The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo and the short story collection Esther Stories...

  • Julie Orringer
    Julie Orringer
    Julie Orringer , is an American writer and lecturer born in Miami, Florida. Her first book, How to Breathe Underwater, was published in September 2003 by Knopf Publishing Group...

  • Ann Packer
    Ann Packer (author)
    Ann Packer is an American novelist and short story writer, perhaps best known for her critically acclaimed first novel The Dive From Clausen's Pier. She is the recipient of a James Michener Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship...

  • ZZ Packer
    ZZ Packer
    ZZ Packer is an African-American author, notable for her works of short fiction.-Life:She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky. "ZZ" was a childhood nickname; her given name is Zuwena...

  • Pai Hsien-yung
    Pai Hsien-yung
    Kenneth Hsien-yung Pai , born July 11, 1937) is a writer who has been described as a "melancholy pioneer." He was born in Guilin, Guangxi, China at the cusp of both the Second Sino-Japanese War and subsequent Chinese Civil War...

  • Ann Patchett
    Ann Patchett
    Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2002 for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include Run, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, and The Magician's Assistant, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize...

  • Bradley Paul
    Bradley Paul
    Bradley Ormond Paul is an American poet.He graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop....

  • Bob Perelman
    Bob Perelman
    Bob Perelman is an American poet, critic, editor and teacher. He is often associated with the Language School group of poets. Perelman is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.-Life and work:...

  • Aimee Phan
    Aimee Phan
    Aimee Phan is an Vietnamese-American author. She was born and raised in Orange County, California. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she won a Maytag Fellowship. Her first novel, We Should Never Meet, was named a Notable Book by the Kiriyama Prize in fiction and a finalist...

  • Jayne Anne Phillips
  • Nick Pierson
  • Andrew J. Porter
    Andrew J. Porter
    Andrew J. Porter is an American short story writer.-Life:Andrew Porter graduated from Vassar College, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop....

  • D. A. Powell
    D. A. Powell
    -Life and career:Powell lived in various places growing up, then graduated high school from Lindhurst High School in Linda, California. He then worked in a number of jobs before eventually settling in Santa Rosa, California, where he attended Sonoma State University. He earned a bachelor's degree...

  • Lia Purpura
    Lia Purpura
    Lia Purpura is an American poet, writer and educator. She is the author of three collections of poems , two collections of essays and one collection of translations...

  • Scott Raab
    Scott Raab
    Scott Raab is an American nonfiction author and contributing journalist for Esquire.-Early years:Scott Raab was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1952. The Raab family relocated to Los Angeles in 1960, but after his parents divorced in 1962, he returned to Cleveland with his mother and two younger brothers...

  • Loree Rackstraw
    Loree Rackstraw
    Loree Rackstraw is an American literary critic and memoirist. She taught English at the University of Northern Iowa from 1966–1996, and she is the author of Love As Always, Kurt: Vonnegut As I Knew Him .-Biography:...

  • Srikanth Reddy
  • Holiday Reinhorn
    Holiday Reinhorn
    Holiday Reinhorn is an American fiction writer known for her short stories.She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the author of Big Cats, published by Free Press in 2005...

  • Lewis Robinson
    Lewis Robinson
    Lewis Robinson is an American author. His first book, Officer Friendly and Other Stories, was published by HarperCollins in 2003. A graduate of Middlebury College and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, Robinson currently lives in Andover, Massachusetts as the writer-in-residence of Phillips Academy.-Life...

  • Matthew Rohrer
    Matthew Rohrer
    Matthew Rohrer is an American poet.Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Rohrer was raised in Oklahoma. He earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the University of Iowa.His first book of poetry, A Hummock in the Malookas , was selected by Mary Oliver...

  • Leonard Schrader
    Leonard Schrader
    Leonard Schrader was an American screenwriter and director, most notable for his ability to write Japanese language films and for his many collaborations with his brother, Paul Schrader...

  • Philip Schultz
    Philip Schultz
    Philip Schultz is an American poet, and the founder/director of The Writers Studio, a private school for fiction and poetry writing based in New York City...

  • Bob Shacochis
    Bob Shacochis
    Bob Shacochis is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary journalist. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.-Writing career:...

  • Curtis Sittenfeld
    Curtis Sittenfeld
    Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld is an American writer. She is author of three novels: Prep, the tale of a Massachusetts prep school, The Man of My Dreams, a coming-of-age novel and an examination of romantic love, and American Wife, a fictional story loosely based on the life of First Lady Laura...

  • David Shields
    David Shields
    David Shields is an American author of non-fiction, fiction, and works that resist generic classification. His latest book is Reality Hunger: A Manifesto...

  • Jim Simmerman
    Jim simmerman
    Jim Simmerman was a poet and editor from the United States.-Biography:Simmerman was born in Boulder, Colorado, in 1952. He received his MFA in Poetry from University of Iowa in 1980...

  • Jane Smiley
    Jane Smiley
    Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.-Biography:Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained an A.B. at Vassar College, then earned an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the...

  • W.D. Snodgrass
  • David St. John
    David St. John
    -Biography:Born in Fresno, California, he was educated at California State University, Fresno, where he studied with poet Philip Levine, and at the University of Iowa, receiving an M.F.A. in 1974...

  • Wallace Stegner
    Wallace Stegner
    Wallace Earle Stegner was an American historian, novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist, often called "The Dean of Western Writers"...

  • Richard G. Stern
    Richard G. Stern
    American writer and educator, Richard G Stern was born in New York City on February 25, 1928. He attended the University of North Carolina from which he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in 1947...

  • Trenton Lee Stewart
    Trenton Lee Stewart
    Trenton Lee Stewart is an American author best known for the Mysterious Benedict Society series. Stewart is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop...

  • Mark Strand
    Mark Strand
    Mark Strand is an American poet, essayist, and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990. Since 2005, he has been a professor of English at Columbia University.- Biography :...

  • Mary Swander
    Mary Swander
    Mary Swander is U.S. author of the recent memoirs The Desert Pilgrim and Out of this World as well as three books of poetry, Heaven-and-Earth House, Driving the Body Back, and Succession....

  • Robert Sward
    Robert Sward
    Robert Sward is an American and Canadian poet and novelist. Jack Foley, in his Introduction to Sward's Collected Poems, 1957-2004 calls him, "in truth, a citizen, at heart, of both countries...

  • Anthony Swofford
    Anthony Swofford
    Anthony Swofford is a writer and former United States Marine known for being the author of the book Jarhead, published in 2003, which is primarily based on his accounts of various situations encountered in the first Gulf War. This memoir was the basis of the 2005 movie of the same name, directed...

  • Mary Szybist
    Mary Szybist
    Mary Szybist is an American poet. She grew up in Pennsylvania, and earned her B.A. and M.T. from the University of Virginia and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow....

  • Jonathan Thirkield
    Jonathan Thirkield
    -Life:Thirkield was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from Wesleyan University, and was a Truman Capote Fellow at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop...

  • Edilberto K. Tiempo
    Edilberto K. Tiempo
    Edilberto Kaindong Tiempo , also known as E.K. Tiempo, was a Filipino writer and professor. He and his wife, Edith L. Tiempo, are credited by Silliman University with establishing "a tradition in excellence in creative writing and the teaching of literacy craft which continues to this day" at that...

  • Danielle Trussoni
    Danielle Trussoni
    Danielle Anne Trussoni is an American writer. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including The New York Times Magazine, Telegraph Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review...

  • Lewis Turco
    Lewis Turco
    Lewis P. Turco , is an American poet, teacher, and writer of fiction and non-fiction. Turco is an advocate for Formalist poetry in the United States.-Life and work:...

  • Justin Tussing
    Justin Tussing
    Justin Tussing is an American writer. Tussing was a graduate of the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop, where he held a Teaching/Writing Fellowship. He later became a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts...

  • Chase Twichell
    Chase Twichell
    Chase Twichell is an American poet, professor, and publisher, the founder in 1999, of Ausable Press. Her most recent poetry collection is Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been, which earned her Claremont Graduate University's prestigious $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award....

  • Michael Tyrell
  • Brady Udall
    Brady Udall
    Brady Udall is an American novelist. In 2010, he was appointed Writer-in-Residence of Idaho, a position he will hold until 2013.-Biography:Udall grew up in a large Mormon family in St. Johns, Arizona. He graduated from Brigham Young University and later attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the...

  • Leslie Ullman
    Leslie Ullman
    Leslie Ullman is an American poet and professor. She is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Slow Work Through Sand , co-winner of the 1997 Iowa Poetry Prize. Her other honors include winning the 1978 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for her first book, Natural Histories,...

  • W.D. Valgardson
  • Jennifer Vanderbes
    Jennifer Vanderbes
    Jennifer Vanderbes is an American novelist. She is best known for her debut novel Easter Island, which received positive reviews from The Washington Post Book World, The Los Angeles Times, and The Christian Science Monitor, and was translated into sixteen languages. The novel mixes together...

  • Abraham Verghese
    Abraham Verghese
    Abraham Verghese is Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University Medical School and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine. He was born in Ethiopia to parents from Kerala, India who worked as teachers. He is a Syro-Malabar Christian...

  • William Veeder
    William Veeder
    William Veeder is a scholar of 19th century American and British literature and a Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Chicago.-Early life:...

  • Jeff Vintar
    Jeff Vintar
    Jeff Vintar is an American screenwriter. He is best known for his original screenplay, Hardwired, which became the basis for I, Robot. He attended the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop where he completed his thesis of short stories, including The Big Oops, Opportunity Community Goes to the...

  • Ellen Bryant Voigt
    Ellen Bryant Voigt
    Ellen Bryant Voigt is an American poet. She has published six collections of poetry and a collection of craft essays. Her poetry collection Shadow of Heaven was a finalist for the National Book Award and Kyrie was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poetry has been...

  • Peter Waldor
    Peter Waldor
    Peter Waldor is an American poet and insurance executive. He is author of Door to a Noisy Room , winner of a Kinereth Gensler Award, and praised by Publishers Weekly as “…familial, humane, and loyal to the good people and the simple delights of this world.” He has had his poems published in...

  • Margaret Walker
    Margaret Walker
    Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander was an African-American poet and writer. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she wrote as Margaret Walker. One of her best-known poems is For My People.-Biography:...

  • Barrett Watten
    Barrett Watten
    Barrett Watten is an American poet, editor, and educator often associated with the Language poets.Since 1994, Watten has taught modernism and cultural studies at Wayne State University in Detroit...

  • John Edgar Wideman
    John Edgar Wideman
    John Edgar Wideman is an American writer, professor at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.-Early life:...

  • Joy Williams
  • Thomas Williams
    Thomas Williams (writer)
    Thomas Williams was an American writer and a National Book Award winning novelist. Williams was twice nominated for the National Book Award. His first nomination was for Town Burning, published in 1959...

  • Sam Witt
    Sam Witt
    Sam Witt is an American poet, and journalist who currently lives in Massachusetts and teaches at Framingham State University.-Life:Born in 1970 in Wimbledon, England, Witt moved to the United States in 1977. He studied as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia and went on to receive his...

  • Ellen Wittlinger
    Ellen Wittlinger
    Ellen Wittlinger is an author for young adults, including Gracie's Girl and the Printz Honor book Hard Love.- Biography :...

  • Daniel Woodrell
    Daniel Woodrell
    Daniel Woodrell is an American writer of fiction. He has written eight novels, most of them set in the Missouri Ozarks. Woodrell coined the phrase "country noir" to describe his 1996 novel Give Us a Kiss...

  • Charles Wright
    Charles Wright (poet)
    Charles Wright is an American poet whose awards include the National Book Award Charles Wright (born August 25, 1935) is an American poet whose awards include the National Book Award Charles Wright (born August 25, 1935) is an American poet whose awards include the National Book Award (19830 for...

  • Rachel Zucker
    Rachel Zucker
    Rachel Zucker is an American poet born in New York City in 1971. She is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently, Museum of Accidents . She also co-edited the book Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections with fellow poet, Arielle Greenberg...



Faculty

Over the years, permanent and visiting faculty have included prominent fiction writers and poets, including:

Fiction writers

  • Nelson Algren
    Nelson Algren
    Nelson Algren was an American writer.-Early life:Algren was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie and Gerson Abraham. At the age of three he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois where they lived in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood on the South Side...

  • Jonathan Ames
    Jonathan Ames
    Jonathan Ames is an American author who has written a number of novels and comic memoirs. He was a columnist for the New York Press for several years, and became known for self-deprecating tales of his sexual misadventures. He also has a long-time envy of boxing, appearing occasionally in the ring...

  • Madison Smartt Bell
    Madison Smartt Bell
    Madison Smartt Bell is an American novelist. He was raised Nashville, and lived in New York, and London before settling in Baltimore, Maryland....

  • Vance Bourjaily
    Vance Bourjaily
    Vance Bourjaily was an American writer, novelist, playwright, journalist, and essayist.-Life:Bourjaily was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Monte Ferris Bourjaily, a Lebanese immigrant who was a journalist and later became editor of the United Features Syndicate, and Barbara Webb, an American-born...

  • T. Coraghessan Boyle
    T. Coraghessan Boyle
    Tom Coraghessan Boyle is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. Since the mid 1970s, he has published twelve novels and more than 100 short stories...

  • Kevin Brockmeier
    Kevin Brockmeier
    Kevin John Brockmeier is an American writer of fantasy and literary fiction. His short stories have been printed in numerous publications and he has published two collections of stories, two children's novels, and two fantasy novels...

  • Ethan Canin
    Ethan Canin
    Ethan Andrew Canin is an American author, educator, and physician. He is a member of the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa....

  • Edward Carey
    Edward Carey (novelist)
    Edward Carey is a playwright, and novelist. He has written several adaptations for the stage, including Patrick Süskind’s The Pigeon, and Robert Coover’s Pinocchio in Venice. His own plays include Sulking Thomas, and Captain of the Birds...

  • Raymond Carver
    Raymond Carver
    Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s....

  • John Casey
    John Casey (novelist)
    John D. Casey is an American novelist and translator.-Life:Casey went to school at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa....

  • R.V. Cassill
  • John Cheever
    John Cheever
    John William Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs." His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy,...

  • Frank Conroy
    Frank Conroy
    Frank Conroy was an American author, born in New York, New York to an American father and a Danish mother. He published five books, including the highly acclaimed memoir Stop-Time, published in 1967, which ultimately made Conroy a noted figure in the literary world...

  • Robert Coover
    Robert Coover
    Robert Lowell Coover is an American author and professor in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction.-Life and works:...

  • Jim Crace
    Jim Crace
    James "Jim" Crace is a contemporary English writer. The winner of numerous awards, Crace also has a large popular following. He currently lives in the Moseley area of Birmingham with his wife...

  • Charles D'Ambrosio
    Charles D'Ambrosio
    -Life:D'Ambrosio grew up in Seattle, Washington, and now lives in Portland, Oregon. He attended Oberlin College and graduated from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he has been a visiting faculty member...

  • Nicholas Delbanco
    Nicholas Delbanco
    -Life:He was educated at Harvard University, B.A. 1963; Columbia University, M.A. 1966. He taught at Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont, 1966–84, and at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1984-85...

  • Stuart Dybek
    Stuart Dybek
    -Personal life:Dybek was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Chicago's Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods in the 1950s and early 1960s. Dybek graduated from St. Rita of Cascia High School in 1959...

  • Deborah Eisenberg
  • Tony Eprile
    Tony Eprile
    Tony Eprile is a South African writer now living in Vermont in the USA. He is the author of Temporary Sojourner and Other South African Stories , which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and The Persistence of Memory , which won the Koret Jewish Book Award, was a New York Times Notable...

  • Judith Grossman
    Judith Grossman
    Judith Grossman is an American writer. She earned a scholarship to Oxford, from which she received a First Class degree in English in 1958. She received a PH.D. from Brandeis University, in 1968. She taught at Bennington College. She also taught in the Creative Writing MFA programs at U. C. Irvine ...

  • Barry Hannah
    Barry Hannah
    Howard Barry Hannah was an American novelist and short story writer from Mississippi.The author of eight novels and five short story collections , Hannah worked with notable American editors and publishers such as Gordon Lish, Seymour Lawrence, and Morgan Entrekin...

  • Ron Hansen
    Ron Hansen (novelist)
    Ron Hansen is an American novelist, essayist, and professor.-Biography:Hansen was born in Omaha, Nebraska, attended a Jesuit high school, Creighton Preparatory School and earned a Bachelor's degree in English from Creighton University in Omaha in 1970. Following military service, he earned an M.F.A...

  • Adam Haslett
    Adam Haslett
    Adam Haslett is an American fiction writer. He was born in Kingston, Massachusetts and grew up in Oxfordshire, England, and Wellesley, Massachusetts. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College , the University of Iowa , and Yale Law School . He has been a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers'...

  • James Hynes
    James Hynes
    James Hynes is an American novelist. He was born in Okemos, Michigan, and grew up in Big Rapids, Michigan. He lived for many years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and currently resides in Austin, Texas, where he has taught creative writing at the University of Texas...


  • John Irving
    John Irving
    John Winslow Irving is an American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978...

  • Thom Jones
    Thom Jones
    Thom Jones is an American writer, primarily of short stories.-Biography:Jones was raised in Aurora, Illinois, and attended the University of Hawaii, where he played catcher on the baseball team...

  • Margot Livesey
    Margot Livesey
    Margot Livesey is a Scottish born writer. She is the author of six novels, numerous short stories, and essays on the craft of writing fiction....

  • Robie Macauley
    Robie Macauley
    Robie Mayhew Macauley was an editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned over 50 years.-Early life:...

  • Paule Marshall
    Paule Marshall
    Paule Marshall is an American author. She was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn to Barbadian parents and educated at Girls High School, Brooklyn College and Hunter College . Early in her career, she wrote poetry, but later returned to prose...

  • Elizabeth McCracken
    Elizabeth McCracken
    Elizabeth McCracken is an American author.McCracken, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, graduated from Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts, earned a B.A. and M.A. in English from Boston University, an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, and...

  • James Alan McPherson
    James Alan McPherson
    -External links:*...

  • Bharati Mukherjee
    Bharati Mukherjee
    Bharati Mukherjee is an award-winning Indian-born American writer. She is currently a professor in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley.-Background:...

  • Chris Offutt
    Chris Offutt
    Christopher John "Chris" Offutt is an American writer.The son of author Andrew J. Offutt, Chris Offutt grew up in a small former mining community in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Kentucky. He quit high school to join the army, but failed the physical...

  • ZZ Packer
    ZZ Packer
    ZZ Packer is an African-American author, notable for her works of short fiction.-Life:She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and Louisville, Kentucky. "ZZ" was a childhood nickname; her given name is Zuwena...

  • Francine Prose
    Francine Prose
    Francine Prose is an American writer. Since March 2007 she has been the president of PEN American Center. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991....

  • Marilynne Robinson
    Marilynne Robinson
    -Biography:Robinson was born and grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho, and did her undergraduate work at Pembroke College, the former women's college at Brown University, receiving her B.A., magna cum laude in 1966, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Ph.D...

  • Philip Roth
    Philip Roth
    Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...

  • James Salter
    James Salter
    James Salter is an American novelist and short-story writer. Once a career officer and pilot in the United States Air Force, he abandoned the military profession in 1957 after successful publication of his first novel, The Hunters.After a brief career at film writing and film directing, Salter...

  • Bob Shacochis
    Bob Shacochis
    Bob Shacochis is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary journalist. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.-Writing career:...

  • Jane Smiley
    Jane Smiley
    Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.-Biography:Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained an A.B. at Vassar College, then earned an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the...

  • Scott Spencer
  • Elizabeth Tallent
    Elizabeth Tallent
    Elizabeth Tallent is an American fiction writer.-Life:Tallent's short stories have been published in literary magazines and journals such as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's Magazine, The Threepenny Review, and North American Review, and her stories have been reprinted in the O...

  • Barry Unsworth
    Barry Unsworth
    Barry Unsworth is a British novelist who is known for novels with historical themes. He has published 15 novels, and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger....

  • Jennifer Vanderbes
    Jennifer Vanderbes
    Jennifer Vanderbes is an American novelist. She is best known for her debut novel Easter Island, which received positive reviews from The Washington Post Book World, The Los Angeles Times, and The Christian Science Monitor, and was translated into sixteen languages. The novel mixes together...

  • Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
  • Joy Williams
  • Meg Wolitzer
    Meg Wolitzer
    Meg Wolitzer is an American writer, born on Long Island, New York. She is the daughter of novelist Hilma Wolitzer.She studied creative writing at Smith College and graduated from Brown University in 1981. She wrote her first novel, Sleepwalking, a story of three college girls obsessed with...

  • Richard Yates
    Richard Yates (novelist)
    Richard Yates was an American novelist and short story writer, known for his exploration of mid-20th century life.-Life:...


Poets

  • Simon Armitage
    Simon Armitage
    Simon Armitage CBE is a British poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life and career:Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic...

  • John Ash
    John Ash (writer)
    John Ash is an expatriate British poet and writer.His lifelong interest in Byzantium is a major theme which runs through his poetry, fiction and travel writing, along with family friends and the three major cities he has lived in...

  • Marvin Bell
    Marvin Bell
    Marvin Bell is an American poet and teacher who was the first Poet Laureate of the State of Iowa.Bell was born in New York City and raised in Center Moriches, Long Island...

  • Ted Berrigan
    Ted Berrigan
    -Early life:Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army in 1954 to serve in the Korean War. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in...

  • John Berryman
    John Berryman
    John Allyn Berryman was an American poet and scholar, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and was considered a key figure in the Confessional school of poetry...

  • Gillian Conoley
    Gillian Conoley
    Gillian Conoley is an American poet, the author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has been anthologized widely, most recently in Norton’s American Hybrid, Counterpath’s Postmodern Lyricisms, Mondadori’s Nuova Poesia Americana , and Best American Poetry...

  • Mark Doty
    Mark Doty
    Mark Doty is an American poet and memoirist.-Biography:He was born in Maryville, Tennessee, earned his Bachelor of Arts from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and received his Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Goddard College in Vermont.In 1989, his partner Wally Roberts tested...

  • Lynn Emanuel
    Lynn Emanuel
    Lynn Collins Emanuel is an American poet. Some of her poetry collections include Then, Suddenly— and Noose and Hook ....

  • Paul Engle
    Paul Engle
    Paul Engle , noted American poet, editor, teacher, literary critic, novelist, and playwright. He is perhaps best remembered as the long-time director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and as founder of the International Writing Program , both at the University of Iowa.-Life:Engle is often mistakenly...

  • Kathleen Fraser
    Kathleen Fraser
    -Early years:Fraser was born in 1937 and grew up in Oklahoma, Colorado, and California.-Her works:Kathleen Fraser's published works include What I Want , Magritte Series , New Shoes , Each Next, narratives , Something in the foreground, a lake , Notes Preceding Trust , When New Time Folds Up ,...

  • James Galvin
    James Galvin (poet)
    James Galvin is an American poet. He has published six collections of poetry, most recently As Is , "X: Poems," and Resurrection Update, Collected Poems, 1975-1997 which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and the Poet’s Prize...

  • Forrest Gander
    Forrest Gander
    Forrest Gander is an American poet, essayist, novelist, critic, and translator.Born in the Mojave Desert, he was raised in Virginia where he attended The College of William and Mary, majoring in geology, a subject referenced frequently in both his poems and essays. He received an M.A...

  • Louise Gluck
    Louise Glück
    Louise Elisabeth Glück is an American poet of Hungarian Jewish heritage. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003, after serving as a Special Bicentennial Consultant three years prior in 2000....

  • Jorie Graham
    Jorie Graham
    Jorie Graham is an American poet. The U.S. Poetry Foundation suggests "She is perhaps the most celebrated poet of the American post-war generation". She replaced poet Seamus Heaney as Boylston Professor at Harvard, becoming the first woman to be appointed to this position...

  • Robert Hass
    Robert Hass
    Robert L. Hass is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He was awarded the 2007 National Book Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Time and Materials.-Life:...

  • Anthony Hecht
    Anthony Hecht
    Anthony Evan Hecht was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, and the Holocaust being recurrent themes in his work.-Early years:Hecht was born in New York...

  • Lyn Hejinian
    Lyn Hejinian
    Lyn Hejinian is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is well known for her landmark work My Life , as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry .-Life:Hejinian was born in the San...

  • Brenda Hillman
    Brenda Hillman
    Brenda Hillman , is an American poet. She was educated at Pomona College, and received her M.F.A. at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California...

  • Anselm Hollo
    Anselm Hollo
    Anselm Paul Alexis Hollo is a Finnish poet and translator. He has lived in the United States since 1967.-Life and work:...

  • Donald Justice
    Donald Justice
    Donald Justice was an American poet and teacher of writing. In summing up Justice's career, David Orr has written, "In most ways, Justice was no different from any number of solid, quiet older writers devoted to traditional short poems. But he was different in one important sense: sometimes his...

  • Claudia Keelan
    Claudia Keelan
    -Life:Keelan, who was born in Anaheim, California, is a graduate of Humboldt State University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Missing Her , and has published poems widely in magazines and journals, including The American Poetry Review,...

  • Galway Kinnell
    Galway Kinnell
    Galway Kinnell is an American poet. He was Poet Laureate of Vermont from 1989 to 1993. An admitted follower of Walt Whitman, Kinnell rejects the idea of seeking fulfillment by escaping into the imaginary world. His best-loved and most anthologized poems are "St...

  • Carolyn Kizer
    Carolyn Kizer
    Carolyn Ashley Kizer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet of the Pacific Northwest whose works reflect her feminism.-Life and work:...

  • August Kleinzahler
    August Kleinzahler
    -Life and career:Until he was 11, he went to school in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he grew up. He then commuted to the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, graduating in 1967. He wrote poetry from this time, inspired by Keats and Kenneth Rexroth translations, among other works...

  • Sukrita Paul Kumar

  • Ann Lauterbach
    Ann Lauterbach
    Ann Lauterbach is an American poet, essayist, and professor. Her most recent poetry collection is Or to Begin Again , a 2009 National Book Award finalist. Her other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the John D. and Catherine C. MacArthur...

  • Mark Levine
    Mark Levine (poet)
    Mark Levine is an American poet and non-fiction writer.He grew up in Toronto, attended Brown University, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop....

  • Larry Levis
    Larry Levis
    Larry Patrick Levis was an American poet.-Youth and Education:Larry Levis was born the son of a grape grower; he grew up driving a tractor, picking grapes, and pruning vines of Selma, California, a small fruit-growing town in the San Joaquin Valley...

  • Robert Lowell
    Robert Lowell
    Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...

  • Thomas Lux
    Thomas Lux
    -Biography:Thomas Lux was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, son of a milkman and a Sears & Roebuck switchboard operator, neither of whom graduated from high school. Lux was raised in Massachusetts on a dairy farm. He was, according to those who knew him in high school, very good at baseball,...

  • Jack Marshall
    Jack Marshall (author)
    Jack Marshall is an award-winning American poet and author born to an Iraqi father and a Syrian mother of Jewish heritage.-Upbringing:...

  • Heather McHugh
    Heather McHugh
    -Life:Heather McHugh, a poet, translator, and educator, was born in San Diego, California, to Canadian parents, John Laurence, a marine biologist, and Eileen Francesca . They raised McHugh in Gloucester Point, Virginia. There, her father directed the marine biological laboratory on the York River...

  • Sandra McPherson
    Sandra McPherson
    Sandra McPherson is an American poet.Born in San Jose, California, McPherson received her B.A. at San Jose State University, and studied at the University of Washington, with Elizabeth Bishop and David Wagoner....

  • Bob Perelman
    Bob Perelman
    Bob Perelman is an American poet, critic, editor and teacher. He is often associated with the Language School group of poets. Perelman is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.-Life and work:...

  • Carl Phillips
    Carl Phillips
    Carl Phillips is an American writer and poet. He is a Professor of English and of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis....

  • Claudia Rankine
    Claudia Rankine
    Claudia Rankine is an American poet and playwright born in 1963 and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and New York City. She has taught at Case Western Reserve University, Barnard College, University of Georgia, and in the writing program at the University of Houston. As of 2011, Rankine is the Henry G...

  • Donald Revell
    Donald Revell
    Donald Revell is an American poet, essayist, translator and professor.Revell has won numerous honors and awards for his work, beginning with his first book, From the Abandoned Cities, which was a National Poetry Series winner. More recently, he won the 2004 Lenore Marshall Award and is a two-time...

  • Mary Ruefle
    Mary Ruefle
    Mary Ruefle is an American poet, essayist, and professor. She has published eleven collections of poetry, most recently, Selected Poems...

  • Tom Sleigh
    Tom Sleigh
    Tom Sleigh is an American poet, dramatist, essayist and academic, who currently lives in New York City. He has published seven books of original poetry, one full-length translation of Euripides' Herakles and a book of essays. At least five of his plays have been produced...

  • Gerald Stern
    Gerald Stern
    Gerald Stern is an American poet. His work became widely recognized after the 1977 publication of Lucky Life, which was that year's Lamont Poetry Selection, and of a series of essays on writing poetry in American Poetry Review. He has subsequently been given many prestigious awards for his...

  • Mark Strand
    Mark Strand
    Mark Strand is an American poet, essayist, and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990. Since 2005, he has been a professor of English at Columbia University.- Biography :...

  • Robert Sward
    Robert Sward
    Robert Sward is an American and Canadian poet and novelist. Jack Foley, in his Introduction to Sward's Collected Poems, 1957-2004 calls him, "in truth, a citizen, at heart, of both countries...

  • Thomas Swiss
    Thomas Swiss
    Thomas Swiss is an American poet, writer, and critic. He was a Professor of English and Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of Iowa. He is currently professor of Culture and Teaching at the University of Minnesota.-Life:...

  • Mary Szybist
    Mary Szybist
    Mary Szybist is an American poet. She grew up in Pennsylvania, and earned her B.A. and M.T. from the University of Virginia and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow....

  • Cole Swensen
    Cole Swensen
    Cole Swensen is an American poet, translator, editor, copywriter, and professor. Swensen was awarded a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship and is the author of more than ten poetry collections and as many translations of works from the French. She received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State...

  • James Tate
    James Tate (writer)
    James Tate is an American poet whose work has earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters...

  • Susan Wheeler
    Susan Wheeler
    Susan Wheeler is an educator and award-winning poet whose poems have frequently appeared in anthologies. She currently teaches creative writing at Princeton University.Her published works include:...

  • Emily Wilson
    Emily Wilson
    Emily R. Wilson is a British classicist who is currently Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the daughter of A. N. Wilson and Katherine Duncan-Jones and the sister of the food writer Bee Wilson...

  • C.D. Wright
  • Dean Young
    Dean Young (poet)
    Dean Young is a contemporary American poet in the poetic lineage of John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch. Often cited as a second-generation New York School poet, Young also derives influence and inspiration from the work of André Breton, Paul Éluard, and the other French Surrealist poets,...

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