By Charlotte Brookins
Do you have ambitious reading goals in the new year? Get started with these six books written by University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduates. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a world-renowned program that offered America’s first creative writing degree in 1936, is housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
These titles are sure to give you a good start on your 2024 reading goals.
Other Minds and Other Stories is a collection of 12 short stories written by Bennett Sims, a CLAS faculty member in the English department. The eerie and profound collection explores horror in everyday life. It was published in November 2023.
From a private detective investigating a posthumous message seemingly left for a widower by his young, recently deceased wife to a philosophy student becoming obsessed with the concept of other minds, Sims’s newest collection is sure to keep readers engrossed.
Sims graduated from the Writers’ Workshop in 2012 and has since published three books and a variety of short stories, many of which have been featured in publications such as The Iowa Review, Story, and Conjunctions.
Published in February 2022, current Writers’ Workshop director and professor in the arts Lan Samantha Chang’s The Family Chao takes on many themes of the holiday season: family, food, and friction.
When the owner of Fine Chao’s Restaurant in Haven, Wisconsin is found mysteriously dead, suspicion falls immediately upon the late man’s three sons, each of whom have their own reasons for wanting their father out of their lives. Both a thriller and an exploration of family relationships, The Family Chao has something for every kind of reader.
Chang attended the Writers’ Workshop from 1991 to 1993 before returning multiple times as a visiting professor and ultimately becoming the program’s director, making her both the first woman and the first Asian-American to hold the prestigious title. Among her other publications are Hunger, All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost, and Inheritance.
Through a collection of lyrical essays, interviews, and poetry, Anaïs Duplan analyzes the relationship between modern creatives and what it means to be liberated, with a special focus on the process of gender transition.
Featuring words from contemporary creators known to employ digital media in their literary works, Blackspace considers the meaning of freedom in three different dimensions: the personal, the social, and the existential. For fans and newcomers of Afrofuturistic writing and theory alike, this book is sure to change the way you look at liberation.
Duplan graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2017. He founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies at Public Space One in 2016, which is an artist residency program that creates dynamic workspaces for artists of color. Five years later, in January 2021, he published Blackspace.
First published in 1991, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from Jane Smiley explores family dynamics, the harsh realities of life on a family farm, and what it means to have complicated relationships with those you love.
When their aging father announces his intention to give them ownership of his 1,000-acre farm, sisters Caroline, Ginny, and Rose are left with only each other to help them keep the property afloat. Faced with a barrage of obstacles from both within and without their family, the only people they have to count on are each other.
Smiley graduated from the workshop in 1976 before choosing to remain at Iowa to complete her PhD. In addition to A Thousand Acres, she has also published Some Luck, Early Warning, and The Greenlanders.
Want to stay immersed in the winter weather through a book? You should take a look at Sean Adams’s The Things in the Snow, published in January 2023.
After a mysterious object appears outside of their research station in the middle of a tundra, three caretakers and one scientist struggle to keep hold of their focus. Unable to take their minds off the unidentified object, the four characters quickly devolve into states of instability, putting both their research and their minds at risk.
The Things in the Snow is one of many publications from Adams. Adams has also written The Heap, Sandwiches for Steve, and has been featured in the summer 2017 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
If you’re looking to escape the cold weather rather than read about it, you’ll find success in Winter in Paradise by Elin Hildebrand, published in October 2018.
After the tragic death of her husband, Irene Steele leaves home to investigate St. John Island, the Caribbean paradise where her husband’s body was discovered. Once she discovers her late beloved’s secret second family, Irene is forced to unravel a thread of secrecy and deceit left behind by her husband.
Hildebrand graduated from the workshop in 1998. In addition to Winter in Paradise, she is also the author of The Identicals, 28 Summers, and The Perfect Couple.
If you’re looking for more reading recommendations by Iowa workshop graduates, check out this cumulative list.