Iowa Writers' Workshop Celebrates Its 75th Anniversary

Tradition trumps Twitter at Iowa Writers' Workshop. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 6/7/2011)

Excerpt: Inside the 154-year-old Victorian home that houses the Iowa Writers' Workshop, you won't see many Amazon Kindles. Twitter is viewed as a potentially disastrous distraction. And you can even anger an instructor for mentioning Google in your writing.

At a time when so much has changed in the publishing industry, the nation's oldest and most prestigious creative writing program embraces tradition. And why not? For more than seven decades, the nation's best young fiction writers and poets have escaped from life to spend two years in Iowa City writing, reading, hearing criticism of their work and meeting lifelong trusted readers. And that formula continues to have success helping top-notch writers develop their craft.

The program, which has helped train everyone from Flannery O'Connor to Michael Cunningham and T.C. Boyle, remains a powerhouse in American literature as it turns 75 this week. To mark the milestone, hundreds of alumni are coming back to campus in what amounts to an all-star gathering of writers who have breathed the air in Iowa City and that of its once-smoky bars.