Joe Fassler, a former student and instructor with the Iowa Youth Writers' Studio, has published his first novel, THE SKY WAS OURS, forthcoming in April 2024 from Penguin Books.

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.

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, 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