What a year! Free Generative Writing Workshops fondly recalls its 2017 workshops. 

January 15 2017

Helen Rubinstein's essays have recently appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, Okey-Panky, and Tin House's Open Bar, and her fiction has been published in The Collagist, Ninth Letter, and Salt Hill. She holds MFA degrees in fiction and nonfiction from Brooklyn College and the University of Iowa, respectively, and currently lives in Mount Vernon, where she is the R.P. Dana Emerging Writer Fellow at Cornell College.

February 19 2017

Akwi Nji is a writer and spoken word artist as well as founder and Executive Director of The Hook, a non-profit organization which produces live literature, storytelling, and spoken word events. She is a 2016 Artist Fellow through the Iowa Arts Council; producer of The NewBo PoJam with SPT Theatre, the largest performance poetry and storytelling event in the Creative Corridor; and producer of The Hook's Drop the Mic, ArtLOUD!, #WeAre, and The Living Room Series.

March 19 2017

Kate Aspengren’s plays include Flyer, Blue Yonder, American Smooth, Too Fast to Fall, and Our Lady of Route 52. Her plays have been published by Samuel French and are produced regularly throughout North America. Her work has also been translated for European production and is included in several anthologies. Her middle-grade novel, Ashley Templeton Is Ruining My Life was published in 2012 by Foreverland Press.

April 16 2017

James Galvin has published eight books of poems, most recently Everything We Always Knew Was True (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). His new and collected poems, Resurrection Update (Copper Canyon Press, 1997), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and the Poet's Prize. His poetry collection, God's Mistress, was a National Poetry Series winner. He teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

May 21 2017

Anaïs Duplan is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016) and the forthcoming chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus (Monster House Press, 2017). Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Hyperallergic, PBS News Hour, the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, Fence, Boston Review, The Journal, and elsewhere. Duplan is also an artist and curator. She has curated exhibitions at the Distillery Gallery, Elastic Arts, Disjecta, the Radical Abacus, Public Space One, and at Mengi in Reykjavík, Iceland, and her visual works have appeared in group exhibitions at Flux Factory, Thomas Robertello Gallery, and on Daata Editions.

June 18 2017

David Duer was formerly the editor of a literary magazine, Luna Tack, and served as an editorial associate and assistant printer for the Toothpaste / Coffee House Press. He is now a language arts teacher at Cedar Rapids Washington High School and the advisor for the Washington Literary Press. His work has been published in Ascent, Exquisite Corpse, North American Review, English Journal, Little Village, and Poetry, among others.

September 17, 2017

Nina Lohman Cilek lives and writes in Iowa. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Huffington Post, The Rumpus, Paste Magazine, and elsewhere. Her current project, a narrative poem exploring the manifestations of pain, creates space for conversation at the intersections of philosophy, theology, and personal narrative.

October 15, 2017

Tameka Cage Conley, PhD, writes fiction, poetry, plays, and essays. She received a doctoral degree in English in 2006 from Louisiana State University, where she was a recipient of the Huel Perkins Doctoral Fellowship. Her dissertation,“Painful Discourses,” was awarded the annual Lewis Simpson Distinguished Dissertation Award. She has received writing fellowships from the Cave Canem Poetry Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Squaw Valley Writers Conference and Workshops. She held a Truman Capote fellowship in Fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop from 2016-17 and is currently a Graduate Fellow in the program.

November 19, 2017

Cate Dicharry received her BA in Political Science from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR, and her MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside’s low-residency program. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Nervous Breakdown, Role/Reboot and other publications. Her debut novel, The Fine Art of Fucking Up, was published by Unnamed Press in April 2015. Cate taught English at Dalian Nationalities University in Dalian China, and worked at the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History before taking on her current role of Youth Programs Coordinator at the University of Iowa International Writing Program.