BROOKLYN, NY (1988) "The Iowa Writers Workshop"

The Iowa Workshop was like Julliard or Harvard Law. You were in rarefied air. You were within reach of the “big leagues.”

Iowa Writer’s Workshop, 1950s?

*

This probably happens to many young writers: you’ve been writing seriously for several years, the rejections are piling up, maybe you’ve finished a novel or written some short stories that nobody wants to read.

And then you think: maybe I should apply to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

This happened to me. I was living in Brooklyn. It was the late 1980s. I was writing, submitting, networking, and yet I still felt like I was a thousand miles away from ever getting published.

What was my problem exactly? I seemed to lack something I couldn’t quite identify. Confidence? Authorial voice? Aesthetic sophistication? Was I trying too hard? Was I not trying hard enough?

Maybe the Iowa Writer’s Workshop was the way to go. Or some other MFA program. Maybe that’s who those programs were for: people like me, who had some talent and were willing to work, but just hadn’t put all the pieces together . . . .

*

*

So I called the Iowa Workshop to ask for an application. Iowa was the best MFA. That was the one everyone talked about.

But I didn’t have the right phone number. I ended up talking to someone at the University of Iowa’s English Department. They told me I would have to enroll as an Iowa undergrad first. And then apply to the workshop.

But I already had a BA. So that didn’t sound right. Otherwise, the woman seemed unable to help me.