The University of Iowa (also known as UI, or simply Iowa) is a flagship public research university located in Iowa City, Iowa. Founded in 1847, Iowa is the oldest university in the state and it is considered a Public Ivy. The university is organized into eleven colleges offering more than 100 areas of study and seven professional degrees
How Writers Write Fiction 2015 will be taught in English as follows: each week, instructors Merrill and Flournoy will post a new video class. In this video class, they will introduce two or three short video lectures given by successful authors of fiction. Featured authors will include Venise Berry, Edward Carey, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Bernice Chauly, Susan Taylor Chehak, Boris Fishman, Angela Flournoy, Paul Harding, Boaz Gaon, Andrew Sean Greer, Naomi Jackson, Leslie Jamison, Mamle Kabu, Jonathan Lethem, Margot Livesy, Stephen Lovely, Peter Orner, and Douglas Trevor, among others. Each week, the video class will be followed by a set of fiction-writing assignments based on the topics these authors presented in their lectures. These assignments will invite you to write fiction, post your work to the MOOC website, and engage in community feedback with your fellow writers. Supplementary readings will also be posted for your exploration.Each week, a team of teaching moderators, all MFA graduates with substantial writing and teaching experience, will lead live discussions of the video topics and the challenges of the writing assignments around the clock in the MOOC discussion forum. Community moderators will actively support the participation of writers who are new to online learning, new to writing fiction, and/or writing as nonnative speakers of English. These community moderators will facilitate the formation of writing groups and support the vitality and inclusivity of your international writing community. Each week's video class will be followed by a "fiction fundamentals" video, in which a teaching moderator or guest author will offer an in-depth analysis of the week's writing themes; a discussion of the fiction fundamentals video will follow in the MOOC discussion forum.
Every Atom: Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself will take a collective approach to a close reading of America’s democratic verse epic, first published without a title in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass and later titled Song of Myself in the 1881 edition.
This creative writing MOOC will focus on writing about identities, communities, and social issues in fiction and nonfiction. There is no cost to enroll; registration is completely free for all participants. No writing experience is required. This MOOC welcomes writers of all communities and identities.
This creative writing MOOC will focus on writing about identities, communities, and social issues in poetry and plays. There is no cost to enroll; registration is completely free for all participants. No writing experience is required. This MOOC welcomes writers of all communities and identities
Welcome! On July 18, 2016, the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa will open the new MOOC Whitman's Civil War: Writing and Imaging Loss, Death, and Disaster. This free open online course will embark upon a journey through Walt Whitman's writings on the American Civil War. Through Whitman's lens, we will explore how writing and image can be used to examine war, conflict, trauma, and reconciliation - in Whitman's time and today. Join us!
NEW COURSE START DATE April 13, 2015How Writers Write Poetry 2015 offers an interactive progression through the principles and practice of writing poetry. The course presents a curated collection of short, intimate talks on craft by two dozen acclaimed poets writing in English. Craft topics include persona, notebooking, the line, the turn, form, and the lyric. The talks are designed for beginning poets just starting to put words on a page as well as for advanced poets looking for new entry points, engagement with process, or teaching tips. The course will be taught by Professor Christopher Merrill, International Writing Program Director, poet, and translator; and Camille Rankine, poet, Assistant Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Manhattanville College, and editorial director of The Manhattanville Review.Contributing poets' video talks will be contextualized through online discussion and writing assignments. The course moderators (all Iowa Writers' Workshop graduates with university level experience teaching creative writing) will join Camille Rankine in offering online facilitation to participants through course discussion forums. Poets who have contributed video craft talks for the course include former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, Kwame Dawes, Marvin Bell, Lia Purpura, Kazim Ali, Kate Greenstreet, Natasha Tiniacos, and many others. How Writers Write Poetry will offer a diversity of answers to the question of how a writer develops and refines the lifelong practice of his or her craft.Enrollment in How Writers Write Poetry is free and unlimited; there is no cost to participants.Course Expectations:Each week, Christopher Merrill and Camille Rankine will present a video class session followed by a pair of writing assignments: one exercise for writers who would like to create new work and/or who are exploring poetry for the first time, one exercise for poets who would like to use this course to examine and refine their work and their approach to poetry writing. Our moderators will lead discussions of the video classes and the writing assignments and will host master classes in which the craft topic of the week may be explored in depth. Participants are encouraged to post their exercises to the course discussion forum for peer feedback and to submit critical feedback on the poems of their fellow writers. The success of the community critique process will depend entirely on the investment made by you and your fellow writers; we encourage you to engage deeply with one another’s work and with the craft principles presented by the course.Certificate of Completion:The University of Iowa offers an optional certificate of completion for this course. For Our How Writers Write Poetry 2014 Alumni:Welcome back! Wondering how this MOOC might compare to last year's? We're pairing new video lectures with those 2014 videos that we think are worth revisiting from a new angle. We're offering two tracks of writing assignments: each week, we'll have one assignment designed for beginning poets and one assignment intended to push experienced poets to engage more deeply with their processes; to reconceptualize, revise, and expand. And we've restructured our workshop process as a master class-workshop hybrid, supported by a collection of resource readings. We're looking forward to working with you again.