Students around table working on and discusssing writing

2-Week Summer Residential Program

At the Summer Residential Program, you will choose a single core course—Poetry, Fiction, Creative Writing, Playwriting, or TV writing—as your focus for the two weeks of the program.

Two students outdoors at summer writing camp

6-week Online Courses

We offer asynchronous 6-week online creative writing courses for high school students every winter and summer. You can study creative writing with us your own schedule, from anywhere in the world!

Instructor in front of whiteboard lecturing

Teachers and Counselors

Teachers and counselors at the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio are chosen, with rare exceptions, from among the students and graduates of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Experience the Iowa Young Writers' Studio

Watch this short video for an inside look at the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio experience.

News

Group of teenagers in the street with American flag

IYWS ’19 Student Alora Young Publishes Memoir in Verse

Thursday, December 1, 2022
Alora Young, who attended the Summer Residential Program in 2019 and studied fiction writing with Jamel Brinkley, has published her first book, Walking Gentry Home: A Memoir of My Foremothers in Verse, with Hogarth Books.
Woman with grandmother embracing

IYWS ’22 Student Publishes YA Book About Her Grandmother’s Holocaust Experience

Thursday, December 1, 2022
IYWS ’22 Student Suzette Sheft, who attended the in-person Summer Residential Program this past June, has published a novelistic nonfiction account of her grandmother’s holocaust experience that is getting attention across the world. “It’s not a novel,” Sheft says. “Everything in it is true. I just believe that borrowing the literary and dramatic tools of fiction helps young readers connect with characters and helps stories stay longer in their minds.”
Alina Grabowski portrait

IYWS ’11 Student Alina Grabowski To Publish Debut Novel

Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Alina Grabowski, who attended the Summer Residential Program in 2011, will publish her debut novel, Women and Children First, with SJPLit/Zando in 2024. Alina’s short story “Girl Walks Into a Bar” was listed as a distinguished story in The Best American Short Stories 2021.Wednesday, November 30, 2022