Curriculum at the Iowa Young Writers' Studio

Students choose a single course of study-- Poetry, Fiction, or Creative Writing (a survey that includes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction)--as their focus for the duration of the Studio. Classes are kept small (12 or fewer students). The same instructor teaches both the seminar and the workshop. Instructors will serve as mentors. Individual conferences are scheduled to ensure that each student gets the proper attention.

SEMINARS
To write, you must read. This is the continuum that connects Sappho to Melville to Woolf to Faulkner to Morrison. One of the goals of the Studio is that our participants understand their place in this tradition. Students can forget about stuffy English classes; our instructors design their seminar around books they love, books that taught or amazed them, books that they want to share. The emphasis of these classes is for students to read as writers; published work will be scrutinized for what can be gleaned about craft. All seminars will include a broad range of readings--stories, short shorts, novel excerpts, essays, and poems--of course fiction writers will read more fiction, poets will read more poetry, and in the creative writing class students will read everything.

WORKSHOPS
Every writing program offers some variation of the workshop; it is the only way a writer can get direct feedback from his or her readers. Workshopping is not writing by committee, instead constructive criticism helps a writer know how work is received and aids them in training their focus. The text for this class is the writing that students generate. Workshop inevitably precipitates in-depth, thoughtful meditations on what it is that writers do. Workshops get their personality from the people who participate in them. At the Young Writers' Studio, our instructors ensure that workshops present a supportive environment.

Because of the scope of the class, the Creative Writing Workshop must concentrate on those elements of writing that are universal. By focusing on basic elements of craft--structure, clarity, image, and language, the class can discuss poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and dramatic writing. This is a great choice if your work already bridges multiple genres or if you want the freedom to explore new forms.

If the short story or novel is your bag, then consider the Fiction Workshop. By focusing on aspects of story like character, setting, dialogue, and voice, this workshop will help writers who are trying to harness the power of their prose.

Among other things, the Poetry Workshop will explore voice, image, metaphor, line, and language. It is important that this most condensed form is capable of standing scrutiny.