The Iowa Writers’ Workshop will welcome three celebrated writers to its fiction faculty beginning this fall. Margot Livesey, Ayana Mathis, and Charles D’Ambrosio, all of whom have served as visiting instructors at the Workshop over the past several years, will join Marilynne Robinson, Ethan Canin, James Galvin, Mark Levine, and Lan Samantha Chang as permanent Workshop faculty members.
Livesey, Mathis, and D’Ambrosio will teach Graduate Fiction Workshop courses and Form of Fiction seminars to students enrolled in the graduate creative writing program.
“All three are world-class writers who love to teach,” says Chang, director of the Writers’ Workshop and May Brodbeck Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “The Workshop is already extraordinarily fortunate to have fiction writers Marilynne Robinson and Ethan Canin on its working faculty. The three new writers will further expand the program’s voice and scope. Each brings a distinct style and subject matter to the program.”
Margot Livesey, author of seven novels, has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. “She has written a number of peerlessly constructed, internationally renowned literary novels,” notes Chang, and “she has a legendary ability to read and dissect a manuscript.” Livesey is currently the distinguished writer-in-residence at Emerson College and will begin teaching at the UI in Fall 2015. margotlivesey.com
Ayana Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she taught as visiting faculty in spring 2013. In February of that year, her debut novel The Twelve Tribes of Hattie was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as the second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 (read the Iowa Now story). Says Chang, “Her deep insight and strong voice are essential to the future of the Workshop.” Mathis currently teaches creative writing at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, New York, and will join the Workshop faculty in Spring 2016. ayanamathis.com
Charles D’Ambrosio, author of two short story collections and one essay collection, has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has taught in Portland State University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing since 2009 and will join the UI faculty in Fall 2014. “D’Ambrosio’s short stories are contemporary American classics,” says Chang, “and his rigorous workshops will strengthen our teaching at its core.”
The Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences awards master of fine arts (MFA) degrees in fiction writing and poetry writing and offers creative writing courses for UI undergraduates. Founded in 1936, the program claims among its graduates winners of virtually every major literary award, including seventeen winners of the Pulitzer Prize, three recent U.S. Poets Laureate, and numerous winners of the National Book Award.
Media contact: Nic Arp, Director of Communications, UI College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, 319-335-2818, nic-arp@uiowa.edu