Yesterday I got the news that the University of Iowa International Writing Program (IWP), where I had a graduate assistantship 2005-2006, will be making severe cuts to their programming due to the US State Department ending their 58 years of partnership and financial funding. The fall residency will still take place, but it will bring to Iowa City only about half the number of remarkable writers as usual. Below is a screenshot of the program’s Facebook post, and you can read more at the Iowa City Press-Citizen.
My job during the 2005 residency (you can see the writers I was privileged to get to know by going to this link and filtering by year) was to assist the writers, especially those who were not native speakers of English, with polishing the transcripts of presentations that would be given as part of a series of panels that took place every week at the Iowa City Public Library. As then-staff editor Nataša explained to me, “Make sure they can be understood without making them sound American.” (That’s cross-cultural editorial advice which has long-echoed in my head. I’ll admit I was not entirely successful as I was chagrined to realize later that I had a habit of “correcting” certain conventions of British English to American English that I didn’t at the time know were not errors.) I also was responsible for photocopying all the presentations (using and refining my editorial assistant skills at fixing paper jams) and assembling and distributing the packets at the event, which meant I had at least an email exchange with each writer, even those who didn’t want help, as I requested the final versions of their transcripts. Often I sat down with them face-to-face and during the residency made several visits to their “home away from home” at the university’s Iowa House Hotel.
If you’re someone inclined to be skeptical of the goings-on at the various writing initiatives at the University of Iowa, it might be easy to suspect this program of being a product by and for literary elites, and maybe eliminating this funding is just some overdue blocking of the gravy train to the privileged. But in my two years at UI working with a variety of writing-related programs, this was the one, specifically in the form of those public library panel presentations, that I might argue had the most direct benefit to the community at large (at least beyond general benefit to the local economy, though as the Press-Citizen article above mentions, the IWP makes a contribution there as well). These panels were intended for and attended by the regular public. I’m not sure I remember many, if any, being packed, but there was absolutely an audience every time, with it seemed to me at least as many locals as university community members (and certainly the locals outnumbered the students, undergraduate or graduate). Where else in the US more than an hour or two from a major city could you get the chance regularly to talk to foreign visitors from 30 countries and hear in person what they had to share? And given that the noon weekday start time made it difficult for some to attend, I believe the panels aired on public access TV as well.
On an individual level, it’s hard to succinctly describe the effect the program had on me. That I’m now confidently able to pronounce Ljubljana? Humility after being scolded by one writer for not being able to explain to her why I was making the changes I was making to her English? It unquestionably did have an effect as I still think about those writers 20 years later. They were all talented, accomplished, and determined, and if they didn’t influence me as much as my Workshop classmates, it’s only because I only had ten weeks during an exceptionally busy time (the busiest weeks of my adult life) to get to know them as opposed to four semesters. They also gave me a personal connection to faraway places I will likely never visit, their names and faces coming to mind when I hear certain bits of grim international news, and a glimpse, however brief, of writer biographies that include challenges and pathways not typically found in the American and English ones I’m more familiar with. Indeed, I now wish I remembered better what some of them had to say about surviving oppression and being brave.
I remember that the writers, too, were impacted by their time in Iowa, in ways big and small. From amusement at the exotic practices of a Big Ten university town during football (not soccer football) season (in particular the women’s shorts that had IOWA printed on the back, which were popular with undergrads, got a lot of comment) to one writer’s unsuccessful quest to find someone who would admit to voting for George W. Bush, they often had a lot of curiosity about this very American place beyond the academic confines of IWP headquarters at Shambaugh House where they were largely surrounded by other writers. This may sound like a trivial point, and indeed there were a few who were firmly anti-American, who left largely holding the same views. But with most of them I think Iowa found a little place in their hearts, and they met Americans who may not have been completely what they expected: one poet, the picture of European sophistication, surprised me a little with her excitement to be back in the spring while on a book tour to promote a translation of her work with an American press. And remember, these are not just any foreign visitors, but those who have audience and varying degrees of influence back home.
You could say this is soft power at work, but to sound less cynical I’d instead characterize the program as a vehicle for international friendship…and is it cheesy to say sometimes more? There was one lasting romance among the writers there during my year, and I was surprised to learn recently that the poet Rita Dove met her husband at an IWP party in the 1970s when she was a Workshop student and he was visiting from Germany. I’m sure those aren’t the only couples who never would have met if it weren’t for the program. All of these connections, the lifelong and the fleeting, help knit our world together a bit more.
I’ve probably been sentimental enough and I don’t want to get too much into eulogy mode – the IWP is only hobbled, not dead – but I think this accounting is important. This week at one of the Writing Together sessions someone read a poem that made me reflect on what we may be losing. Add something else to the list.
Meg thank you for both of these posts. The termination of the grants for the IWP is heartbreaking especially for those like you who know it and it’s vaste reaching influences so intimately, and certainly, the people of Iowa. What an exceptional experience you had there. This all smacks once again of the diminution of education, the arts. nuance, right-brain activités, growth, soul-level meaning and international engagement and appreciation. Thank you for sharing this story; perhaps you’ll consider submitting this as an opinion piece in some newspapers including the Des Moines Register or send a copy to Joni Ernst and other Trump, Musk, DOGE sycophants in the state whose motto is “our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain”. Sad……
Thanks for reading, Melinda. The program has gotten an outpouring of support and many eloquent people are writing about what it has meant to them. Looks like the news article about it is the top story right now in the Cedar Rapids Gazette (not as well known as the Register but closer geographically to the program). I should send it to the IWP as I wouldn’t be surprised if they were collecting them, and they’d know best how to use these testimonies. But you’ve got me thinking about sending a version of this piece to my own Republican Congressman. He’s been there for decades and I think may be too savvy to be a MAGA true believer, but of course he toes the line. I had an idea that he was on some of the Foreign Relations committees and sure enough: House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Human Rights, etc… I don’t have high hopes, but I’d be curious about the response I’d get because I think he understands the work these initiatives do.