The University of Iowa Admissions
Faculty Say... James Alan McPherson, 1978 Pulitzer Prize Winner
"Iowa has the best writing program in the country." James Alan McPherson
   
  McPherson, a creative writing professor in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is the author of Hue and Cry, Railroad, Elbow Room, Crabcakes, Fathering Daughters, and A Region Not Home. Elbow Room won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for 1978. In addition to teaching students in the Writers' Workshop, he has written short stories and essays that have appeared in many prominent periodicals, including the Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, Esquire, and Playboy. McPherson's work has been anthologized in volumes including Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Award Short Stories. He has served on the selection committees of the Pulitzer Prize and other major literary awards. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, his honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant." He has worked at the University since 1981, and earned his MFA from the Writers' Workshop in 1971.    
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Cultivating writers
I believe Iowa has the best writing program in the country. It attracts the best students, cultivates them, and helps them on their way, so it does the nation a very good service.

Working with undergraduates
In addition to teaching in the graduate-level Iowa Writers’ Workshop, I work with undergraduate honor students and students in the University’s Nonfiction Writing Program. I also teach a class on Mondays in an assisted living center. What I enjoy most about the undergraduates I work with is their curiosity. They want to explore literature and express themselves. I just do the best I can to help them.

 
       
Undergraduate major in English
Iowa Writers’ Workshop
 
The University of Iowa Admissions