The Writers’ Worksop, founded in 1936, may be the grandparent of
all writing programs at Iowa, but it isn’t the only academic unit
that teaches writing. Here are some others:
- Nonfiction Writing,
courses in English department that range from essays and personal writing
to technical and business writing.
- Creative Writing
studio workshop, an English department course that may be taken as part
of the General Education Program.
- Undergraduate
Translation Workshop, a program in both English and comparative literature.
- Writing about
Cinema and Rhetorical Criticism, undergraduate courses in comparative
literature.
- Screenwriting,
a course in preparing screenplays for theatre or television, in communication
studies.
- Playwriting,
a sequence of eight courses in theatre arts that culminates in performances
of works by the Iowa Playwrights Workshop.
- Journalism and Mass Communication, an undergraduate major preparing students in journalistic writing for careers in newspapers, magazines, radio, television, the World Wide Web, and public relations.
In addition, most colleges have formal or informal writing assistance for students, often given by current or former Writers’ Workshop students. The Center on Teaching has run seminars on teaching writing to undergraduates.
President Mary Sue Coleman told an Open Forum in September that she would like to develop a Writing Certificate program for undergraduates that would certify that the student has passed tests of writing and composition.
Campus Resources for Writers
Center for the Book
The Center offers a graduate certificate in Book Studies/Book Arts & Technologies. Students build books by hand, setting the type, making paper, and creating the artistic vision of the book.
Iowa Review
In 2000, The Iowa Review will enter its 30th year of continuous publication. "We take our mission to be nudging along American literature, to be local but not provincial, to be experimental but not without elegance," the publication’s web page says. "Although you may find writers already familiar to you in most of our issues, you will surely find others who are not. Discovering a new and compelling writer still seems the magic of our work, as does, increasingly, the frontier of the Web."
Iowa Summer Writing Festival
This festival, not related to the Writers’ Workshop, brings aspiring writers to Iowa from all over the United States and some international countries to take part in workshops in many phases of writing.
Playwrights Workshop
The Playwrights Workshop is an intensive three-year master of fine arts degree program dedicated to educating writers for the professional theatre. It was founded in the fall of 1971, but a strong tradition of playwrighting at the University has existed since the early 1920s.
The University of Iowa Press
In one of the oldest buildings in Iowa City, the press publishes a wide-ranging selection of books on literature, history, music, architecture, and a host of other fields.