Now in its 26th year, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a short-term noncredit writing program for adults administered through the University of Iowa's Division of Continuing Education. Each summer, we bring approximately 1,500 writers to the University to participate in 130-140 weeklong and weekend workshops across the genres. These include novel, short fiction, poetry, memoir, essay, screenwriting, playwriting, travel writing, humor, writing for children, and more.

The Festival is proud to belong to Iowa City—a UNESCO City of Literature and the first American City of Literature in the Creative Cities Network. Iowa City has long been a haven for writers, and The University of Iowa our ancestral home. While we agree in part with the popular maxim that writing cannot be taught, the Festival exists and proceeds on the assumption that it can be learned. Our aim as a program is to provide fertile ground for this work, regardless of the level of literary accomplishment with which participants arrive. As a result, we have no requirements for admission beyond the desire to write. Classes in the Festival are conducted as workshop, where the primary text is participants' own creative work.

The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is an opportunity for you to share your work in a community that wishes it well. It's a long conversation we've been having in Iowa City. We invite you to pull up a chair.