Our Instructors
Over the five years we have been hosting workshops at the Iowa Writers’ House, we’ve been honored to learn from over 40 wonderful instructors who have led us in explorations of writing that bettered our skills, knowledge, and craft.
Get to know all of our past instructors!
Susan Aizenberg
Susan is the author of Muse (Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), part of the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry and the recipient of the 2003 Levis Reading Prize; and a chapbook-length collection of poems, Peru (Graywolf Press, 1997), which appears in Take Three: 2/AGNI New Poets Series.
Mary Allen
Mary’s writing — and broad range of writing topics — reflect her belief that the personal and the practical, the painful and the numinous, the spiritual and the ordinary are all blended together in our lives and cannot be separated from one another without at least part of the truth being lost.
Larry baker
Larry, who holds a degree in English from the University of Oklahoma and a doctorate from the University of Iowa, put himself through college by managing movie theaters. He is the author of multiple novels and lives with his wife and children in Iowa City, where he teaches literature and history.
timothy bascom
Timothy is the author of the memoir Running to the Fire (University of Iowa Press, 2015), His earlier memoir, Chameleon Days (Houghton Mifflin), won the Bakeless Literary Prize. Bascom, who received his M.F.A. from The University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, is Director of Creative Writing at Waldorf University.
Daniel Boscaljon
Daniel was educated in the humanities, receiving a doctorate in Religious Studies with a focus on agnosticism and atheism, and a doctorate in English with a focus on 19th-century American Literature and narrative theory. He co-hosts Thesacredprofane, a podcast focused on critical inquiries into contemporary culture.
Elisabeth Chretien
Elisabeth has a decade of experience editing general nonfiction and memoir at the University of Iowa Press and the University of Nebraska Press. She is passionate about telling good, true stories, and is always excited to talk about story structure and copyright law. She also loves coffee, and her black cat approves all of her edits before they are returned to the author.
Jennifer Cognard-Black
Jennifer is a professor of English and received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in nineteenth-century literature and feminist theory. She is a two-time Fulbright scholar to the Netherlands and Slovenia, a finalist for the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, and a recipient of the Norton T. Dodge Award for Creative and Scholarly Achievement.
Jennifer Colville
Jennifer holds an M.F.A. from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Utah. Her stories have appeared in The Literary Review, The Mississippi Review, The Iowa Review, Diagram, and on the Huffington Post. he is the founding editor of PromptPress, a journal for the interplay of visual art and writing. She co-runs the Free Generative Writing Workshops in Iowa City.
Julia Conrad
Julia is a writer and violin player from Brooklyn, New York. She is a dual MFA candidate in Nonfiction and in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. She has received fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and Wesleyan University, and her work has been published in The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Nexos, and the forthcoming Haymarket Books anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion.
Wendy Delsol
Wendy is the author of four novels, and the recipient of an Iowa Author Award. She has an undergraduate degree from Michigan State University and a graduate degree from California State University, Long Beach. She was born in Canada, grew up in Michigan, lived in Los Angeles for 20 years, and now resides in the Des Moines area.
Calla Devlin
Calla is the author of Tell Me Something Real, a finalist for the PEN Literary Award and the Morris Award, and Right Where You Left Me. A Pushcart nominee and winner of the Best of Blood and Thunder Award, her stories have been included in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Originally from California, she currently lives in Iowa with her family.
Nicole Dieker
Nicole has been a full-time freelance writer since 2012. Her work regularly appears at Lifehacker, Bankrate, Vox, Haven Life, and numerous other sites. Her debut novel, The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 1: 1989–2000, was published in May 2017; The Biographies of Ordinary People, Volume 2: 2004–2016 followed in May 2018.
Andy Douglas
Andy is the author of The Curve of the World: Into the Spiritual Heart of Yoga. He was born in Brazil to missionary parents, and travel and spiritual practice have shaped his life ever since. In 2005, he received an MFA in Creative Writing, also from the University of Iowa, where he was the recipient of the Marcus Bach Fellowship for Writing about Religion and Culture.
Rebecca Entel
Rebecca’s short stories and essays have appeared in such journals as Guernica, Joyland, Cleaver, Literary Hub, Catapult, and Electric Literature. She is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Cornell College, where she teaches courses in creative writing, multicultural American literature, Caribbean literature, and the literature of social justice. Fingerprints of Previous Owners is her first novel.
lori erickson
Lori is one of the country’s top travel writers specializing in spiritual journeys. Her memoir Holy Rover: Journeys in Search of Mystery, Miracles, and God (Fortress Press) explores the transformative power of travel through trips to a dozen holy sites around the world. Her articles have been published in publications that include National Geographic Traveler, Family Circle, USA Today, Woman’s Day, and House Beautiful.
Jennifer Fawcett
Jennifer is the winner of the NNPN Smith Prize and the Susan Glaspell Award for Apples in Winter, the NEFA National Theatre Project Award (with her company Working Group Theatre) for Out of Bounds, the Kennedy Center’s National Science Playwriting Award for Atlas of Mud, and she was nominated for the ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award for Birth Witches.
Cecile Goding
Cecile is from a small county in South Carolina, where she worked for the adult literacy movement before moving to Iowa City to attend the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program and the Iowa Writers Workshop. For her poems, she has won the Theodore Roethke and Richard Hugo prizes, a fellowship from the SC Academy of Poets, and a Bread Loaf scholarship.
Cheryl Graham
Cheryl Graham is an illustrator, designer and writer. She draws author portraits for Little Village and the Chicago Tribune, and her editorial work has appeared in publications nationwide. At the Writers’ House, she led a workshop on the craft of the graphic memoir, teaching attendees about all of the unique ways images can help tell a story.
Heather Gudenkauf
Heather is the Edgar Award nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Weight of Silence, These Things Hidden and Not A Sound. Heather Gudenkauf graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in elementary education, has spent her career working with students of all ages and continues to work in education as a Title I Reading Coordinator. Heather lives in Iowa with her family and a very spoiled German Shorthaired Pointer named Lolo.
David Hamilton
David is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Iowa, where he taught for nearly forty years. The author of A Certain Arc: Essays of Finding My Way (Ice Cube Books, prose), Deep River: A Memoir of a Missouri Farm (University of Missouri Press, prose), The Least Hinge (Frith Press, poems), Ossabaw (Salt Publications, poems), and numerous uncollected essays, he edited The Iowa Review for a few decades and directed, for a few years, Iowa’s MFA Program in Nonfiction.
Beth M. Howard
Beth’s books include Making Piece: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Pie; Ms. American Pie: Buttery Good Pie Recipes and Bold Tales from the American Gothic House; and her latest, Hausfrau Honeymoon: Love, Language and Other Misadventures in Germany. she’s written for The New York Times, Real Simple, Country Living, among many other publications over a 30-year span in journalism.
Becca Klaver
Becca Klaver is the author of two books of poetry—LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010) and Empire Wasted (Bloof Books, 2016)—and several chapbooks. Black Lawrence Press will publish her third full-length collection, Ready for the World, in 2020. Her poems, which explore place, gender, American culture, and virtual and physical realities, have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Fence, jubilat, Gramma Weekly, The &NOW Awards 3: The Best Innovative Writing, and on Verse Daily and the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day series.
Lyz Lenz
Lyz’s writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times, Pacific Standard, and others. Her book God Land was published in 2019, through Indiana University Press. Her second book Belabored, is due out from Bold Type Books on August 11, 2020. Lyz received her MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She lives in Iowa with her two kids and two cats and is a columnist for the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
Keith Lesmeister
Keith is the author of the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here (MG Press, 2017). His fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, Gettysburg Review, North American Review, Redivider, Slice Magazine, and many others. His nonfiction has appeared in River Teeth, Sycamore Review, The Good Men Project, Tin House Open Bar, Water~Stone Review, and elsewhere. He received his M.F.A. from the Bennington Writing Seminars. He lives and works in rural northeast Iowa.
Rebecca Makkai
Rebecca is the Chicago-based author of the story collection Music for Wartime, as well as the novels The Hundred-Year House (a BookPage “Best Book” of 2014 and winner of the Chicago Writers Association Award) and The Borrower (a Booklist Top Ten Debut). She also appears regularly in publications such as Harper’s, Tin House, and Ploughshares.
Sabata-mpho Mokae
Mokae is the author of The Story of Sol T Plaatje (biography), Dikeledi [Tears] a youth novella and Escaping Trauma, and a poetry collection . Mokae won the M-Net Literary Award for Best Novel in Setswana for his first novel, Ga Ke Modisa [I’m Not My Brother’s Keeper] as well as the South African Literary Award (literary journalism category) in 2011.
Michele Morano
Michele is the author of the travel memoir Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Essays, I'll Tell You Mine: Thirty years of Essays from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, and the forthcoming Waveform: Twenty-First Century Essays by Women.
Lynne Nugent
Lynne has been managing editor of The Iowa Review since 2003. Her chapbook of essays on motherhood and domesticity, Nest, won the 2019 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award and was published by The Florida Review in March 2020. Her personal essays have appeared in the North American Review, Brevity, the New York Times, Full Grown People, Mutha Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, and elsewhere.
Alexandra Penn
Alexandra was a museum kid. The daughter of a photographer and a Scuba diver, she spent her teenage years in the field: Penn has worked with Smithsonian archaeologists, NASA software engineers, volcanologists, and photographers. Her work is both a love letter to and an intense criticism of the academic world.
John Peragine
John is a published author of 14 books, has ghostwritten over 100 others and does freelance work for the New York Times, Reuters, and Bloomberg News. He has also written for Today.com, Grapevine Magazine, Writer's Digest, Wine Enthusiast and more. John has been writing professionally since 2007, after working 13 years in Social Work and as a professional symphony musician.
Mary Rakow
Mary has a Ph.D., comes to fiction from theology. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School and Boston College, she is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship. Her newly released novel, This is Why I Came, (December, 2015) is heralded as a “Blakean tour de force” and has received critical praise in The Atlantic, Boston Globe, Washington Post, O Magazine and Ploughshares.
Robert James Russell
Robert is the co-founding editor of the literary journal Midwestern Gothic, as well as the micro-press MG Press, and the online literary journal CHEAP POP. He’s been nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize, and was awarded an artist residency with the University Musical Society for the 2014-2015 performance season. In 2016 he was awarded Runner-up for the Passages North Waasnode Fiction Prize, and his essay “Lord of the Lake” was a finalist for the Parks and Points Fall Essay Contest.
Christine Sneed
Christine is the author of the novels Paris, He Said and Little Known Facts, as well as the story collections Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry and the forthcoming The Virginity of Famous Men. Her books have received AWP’s Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, Ploughshares 'Zacharis prize, the Society of Midland Authors Award, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, and Book of the Year from the Chicago Writers Association.
Mary Helen Stefaniak
Stefaniak, a native of Milwaukee, grew up in a bicultural household: her father was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; her mother in Gordon, Georgia. She divides her time between Iowa City and Omaha, where she is Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at Creighton University.
Emily Stochl
Emily is a freelance writer who does marketing, grant writing, and other brand writing projects. A Book Riot contributor and host of Pre-Loved podcast, her journey with sustainability began with a love of thrifting and later on watching the documentary, The True Cost, and a love of budget backpacking.
Mary Swander
Mary is the author of over 13 books of non-fiction and poetry, Poet Laureate of Iowa and Executive Director of AgArts, a foundation designed to imagine and promote healthy food systems through the arts.
Nancy Swisher
A Transformational Coach and Spiritual Mentor, Nancy has been supporting women and men to heal, transform, and evolve in consciousness for over twenty years. In the newest iteration of her business, she serves both emerging and established women leaders through her transformational coaching program Find Your Voice. Stand Behind It. Change the World. Nancy holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Vu Hoang Tran
Vu is a Vietnamese American writer. He graduated from the University of Tulsa with an MA, from the Iowa Writers' Workshop with an MFA, and from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow in Fiction with a PhD. His debut novel, Dragonfish, was released in 2015. His work has appeared in the Southern Review, Glimmer Train Stories, Harvard Review, Fence Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, Nimrod, Interim, and Antioch Review.
Kali VanBaale
Kali is an American novelist who publishes under both her maiden and married name. Her first novel, The Space Between, received an American Book Award in 2007, an Independent Publisher's silver medal for general fiction, and the Fred Bonnie Memorial First Novel Award in 2006.
Carson Vaughan
Carson is a freelance journalist from central Nebraska with a focus on the Great Plains. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker (online), The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Paris Review Daily, Outside, Pacific Standard, VICE, In These Times, and more. His first book, Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream, was published via Little A in April 2019.
Inara Verzemnieks
Inara is the author of the memoir, Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe (W.W. Norton). The book, which the Washington Post in a recent review called “important,” and “exquisitely written,” retraces the steps of her grandmother, a war refugee, and her great-aunt, a Siberian exile, in the wake of World War II, and recounts Verzemnieks's own journey back to the remote Latvian village where her family broke apart.
Theodore Wheeler
Theodore is a fiction writer, roving bookseller, college professor, pub quiz host, and legal reporter living in Omaha, Nebraska. He is author of the novel Kings of Broken Things, the collection of short fiction Bad Faith, and In Our Other Lives, a new novel due out from Little A in the Spring of 2020.
Jen Wilson
Jen has been a writer and journalist for more than 20 years, and is one of 22 chief editors for Meredith Corporation. Her roots travel book Running Away to Home won national accolades. Her new novel, Water, a unique publishing partnership with Iowa iconoclast Raygun, helps shed light on all sides of the Iowa water quality debate-told through the lens of troubled and feisty journalist Freja Folsom, whose assignment to Iowa's water story is complicated by her involvement with a sexy water works director ... and her attraction to the rogue well driller who thwarts him.