The biggest big-deal graduate level creative writing program in these United States. Meeting every year at the Dey House of the University of Iowa’s extensive campus, it admits 2.7% to 3.7% of applicants per year.
The philosophy of the workshop is that writing should be a technical and rigorous pursuit. The Workshop is an intense scene.
“The model constantly exposed students to outside opinions on their fiction and created a pressurized atmosphere that forced students to reign in their emotional reactions and consider their work analytically.”
Rather than indulge the artsy whims of their students, the Workshop aimed to ground and refine them. For better or worse, the Workshop was swarmed from the 1970s on with students who dreamed of being shithead journalists and creative nonfiction writers. If you resent the snark and self-sniffing cleverness of today’s journalism, Iowa may deserve some of the blame. Add it on the stack of how Generation X pulled the last ladders up while singing “Woe is me,” all the way to the bank.
The Normal Times 