The Iowa Young Writers' Studio offers 6-week online creative writing courses for high school students twice every year! We offer the online courses for 6 weeks every winter, mid-January through late February, and every summer, late June through early August. We do not offer online courses in the fall. We accept applications in September and October for winter courses and in March and April for summer courses (check this page for updated information). We accept applications from students in the United States and welcome applications from abroad. We accept applications from 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th graders. Students must be able to read and write in English. The online courses run independently of the Summer Residential Program, and though they're intended for students with a passionate interest in writing, admissions decisions for these courses are based less on writing ability than on enthusiasm and commitment to learning.
This winter, 2025, we will offer five 6-week online courses (see descriptions below). These courses will run from Sunday, January 19th through Sunday, March 2nd, 2025. All courses will be taught by graduates of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. The online courses will require approximately 3-4 hours of engagement per week, which will include writing assignments, reading assigned materials, critiquing classmates’ writing, and participating in online discussions.
These online courses are asynchronous, meaning that students can complete the assignments and post in the discussion forums on their own schedules in their free time. There will not be any live class sessions. It is important to note that even though students will be able to do the assignments on their own schedules, at any hour of the day or night, they will have to meet weekly deadlines.
Please note that we do not offer these courses for college credit. Students who complete the course with a passing grade will receive a Letter of Completion from the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. Students will also be able to download a pdf of their final letter grade at the end of the course.
Winter 2025 Online Courses
Writing From Everyday Life: Nonfiction and Personal Essays. Nonfiction Writing (accepting applications from September 15th st 1 a.m. CST until October 31st at 11:59 p.m. CST)
Instructor: Wyatt Williams
In Writing From Everyday Life: Nonfiction and Personal Essays, we’ll learn about the many ways that writers gather material from the world around them and their everyday lives. How did George Orwell transform a job washing dishes into his first book? Why does the act of closely listening to music allow the poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib to see the world more clearly? When Michelle Zauner shops for groceries, what does she learn about life? We will learn to harness our personal interests along with the materials around us as we generate, discuss, and workshop nonfiction writing. In the end, we'll learn basic concepts and techniques of nonfiction craft and emerge with some fresh, exciting personal essays inspired by our everyday lives. (Students will be required to complete weekly assignments and participate regularly in group discussions.)
Sense of Witness: Poetry and Perception. Poetry Writing (accepting applications from September 15th st 1 a.m. CST until October 31st at 11:59 p.m. CST)
Instructor: Danielle Wheeler
Sense of Witness: Poetry and Perception is an online poetry writing class for high school students. This course takes inspiration from the poet Muriel Rukeyser, who preferred to call her readers “witnesses” because it was more active: [it] “includes the act of seeing or knowing by experience.” In this six-week course, we’ll be witnesses: to each others writing, to the poems of poets like Rukeyser, Bei Dao, and Audre Lorde, to what is happening around us… and to our inner selves. We’ll ask ourselves: how does one witness the self? How have poets, historically, witnessed themselves and the world in their work? How do we witness what is happening the world? And how does this all influence our writing? Along the way, we’ll experiment with style, form, inspiration, and voice, and you’ll produce work that will be workshopped and considered by your instructor and your classmates. You'll learn basic concepts and techniques of poetic craft and emerge with some fresh writing and some workshopped pieces. No prior poetry writing experience is required, though it certainly can’t hurt. Come with a willingness to read, write, and thoughtfully consider the work of others. (Students will be required to complete weekly assignments and participate regularly in group discussions.)
A Perusable Feast. Creative Writing (accepting applications from September 15th st 1 a.m. CST until October 31st at 11:59 p.m. CST)
Instructors: Connor White and Ellen Boyette
A Perusable Feast is an online creative writing class for high school students. A Perusable Feast is a genre-mashing, experimental writing course aimed at helping you ask yourself the questions: What sort of writer am I? What sort of reading inspires me? and, What are my artistic sensibilities, anyway? In it, you will test the boundaries between fiction, poetry, nonfiction, drama, journalism, and various other sorts of creative writing which, taken together, constitute a vast and intricate wonder-scape just waiting to be explored. John Crowley, in his novel Little Big, envisions a series of nested imaginative realms, each bigger than the one that contains it. In exploring the realms of the written word, we will take Crowley's model as our own; the farther in you go, the bigger it gets! We will find out how, by working through the nuts and bolts of specific challenges in various kinds of writing, we can gain access to larger ideas about writing in general, ideas that transcend distinctions of "genre" and allow us to make use of our words as tools for thinking, for seeing the world. We will put these tools to use in short, guided writing exercises, which we will discuss, along with published works by established authors, in a conversational online setting. Think of this course as a six-week literary potluck. You are the cook and the banqueter. On both accounts, welcome, and enjoy! (Students will be required to complete weekly assignments and participate regularly in group discussions.)
Get Dusty! Fiction Writing (accepting applications from September 15th st 1 a.m. CST until October 31st at 11:59 p.m. CST)
Instructor: Anna Polonyi
This course is about getting dusty. With a global pandemic that has drastically reduced the scope of our physical activities, it's crucial for young writers to hone their most precious tools: the five senses. Hands-on observatories will be a core feature of this class: you’ll do fieldwork exploring each sense, and discuss strategies for how best to render that sense on the page, with examples from successful fiction and playful experiments in your own writing. We’ll be using sight to discuss character, sound to think about dialogue, smells to look at setting, taste and touch to gain insight into tension and point-of-view. You’ll come out of this course with craft tools to discuss fiction, several pieces of original writing, a daily writing practice to rely on, and a method for giving constructive feedback to your peers. (Students will be required to complete weekly assignments and participate regularly in group discussions.)
Ricochet Visions. Speculative Fiction Writing (accepting applications from September 15th st 1 a.m. CST until October 31st at 11:59 p.m. CST)
Instructor: Ren Arcamone
In this course, we’ll be writing and exploring unreal worlds. We’ll visit the world of unkillable women and time-bending alien language, of psychic surgeons and dystopian summer camps. We’ll visit the land of the dead and the land of unsociable wizards. In some ways, these worlds will give us a way out of this one, an escape from the tedium of our regular lives—but escapism isn’t the only promise of fantastic writing. Often, our depictions of unreal worlds are less fabrication than warped mirror. They offer what Ray Bradbury calls ‘a ricochet vision’: a twisted reflection of our current world that reveals something true. (Students will be required to complete weekly assignments and participate regularly in group discussions.)
If your application is accepted but the section of the course you applied for has filled, you may be offered a section with a different (but equally awesome!) instructor.