Free Generative Writing Workshop is Iowa City's only monthly writing workshop that brings together adult writers of all levels to have their imaginations sparked by our area's most talented writers and teachers, at absolutely no cost. The goal is to create a supportive environment where participants can generate new writing and meet others interested in the same. Each month a different talented writer-teacher from our area will invite us to write from an original prompt—and then compose along beside us as we explore where that prompt leads. After writing, we'll have the option to share what we've created and receive feedback.
Bring beloved writing implements, warming drinks, a talisman, and your own wild imagination.
About the Instructor
Tameka Cage Conley, PhD is a literary artist who 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. In October 2013, she received the Eben Demarest Trust grant, awarded annually to an artist or archaeologist. Past recipients of the Demarest include painter James Pollock (1945) and choreographer Kyle Abraham (2012). 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. A Gathering of Sons, the opera for which she wrote the libretto, commissioned by Pittsburgh Festival Opera, recently had its world premiere and was met with acclaim.