The Iowa Young Writers' Studio is a creative writing program for high school students at the University of Iowa, housed in the Magid Center for Undergraduate Writing. The Iowa Young Writers’ Studio offers a summer residential program as well as online courses. The Studio gives promising high school-age creative writers the opportunity to share their writing with teachers and peers.
Every summer we offer both in-person and online versions of the 2-week Summer Residential Program. The summer in-person and online programs will run concurrently with a session offered in June and a second session in July. Students will spend 2 weeks deeply immersed in the art and craft of creative writing. Each student will take one core course for the duration of the session. The core courses are taught by graduates of the renowned Iowa Writers' Workshop. Students may select a core course in fiction writing, poetry writing, or creative writing (which includes some combination of fiction, poetry, and personal essay). We also offer core courses in TV writing and playwriting. Students will share their writing with teachers and peers, receive constructive critique, and participate in writing exercises and activities. To supplement the core courses, we'll also offer readings by exciting published writers; workshops on process and aspects of craft; discussions on writing-adjacent subjects (literary translation, film, revision, mental health); collaborative projects to allow small groups of students to work together; as well as open mics, talent shows, icebreakers, and social gatherings designed to give students the opportunity to connect with one another.
The in-person version of the Summer Residential Program will take place in Iowa City, Iowa on the University of Iowa campus.
The online version of the Summer Residential Program will take place on CANVAS and/or Zoom and may or may not include live class sessions. The online Summer Residential Program will require 3-4 hours of mandatory engagement per week day.
We believe that cultivating and protecting one's writing life—the artistic practice, the inner journey of exploration and discovery—should take precedence over pursuing a writing career, though certainly the former can lead to the latter. Above all, we want to bring adolescent writers together to celebrate all that they have in common, to encourage them to explore themselves and their worlds, and to welcome them into the large community of writers that radiates outward from Iowa City.
