The Writing University Podcast
The Writing University podcast features recordings of illuminative craft talks from the renowned writers, novelists, poets, and essayists who present at the Eleventh Hour Lecture Series during the University of Iowa's Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
- Update frequency
- every 5 days
- Average duration
- 48 minutes
- Episodes
- 128
- Years Active
- 2007 - 2023
Episode 132: Crafting "Excess" - Darius Stewart
For this talk, we - together, you and I, audience and speaker - will explore maximalist writing as an aesthetics of excess that, according to Will Hertel, strives to "submerge readers with informatio…
00:52:23 |
Thu 19 Oct 2023
Episode 131: Prepping for Publication: How and Where to Submit Your Manuscripts - Kelly Dwyer
You've written and revised a novel, memoir, story, flash fiction, or poem, and now you want to submit it for publication. As she navigates the publication of her third novel, Ghost Mother, author Kel…
00:48:42 |
Mon 11 Sep 2023
Episode 130: Writing into (and out of) Trope, Cliche, and Abstraction - Anna Bruno
To borrow a cliche, let's go down the rabbit hole. But on the way down, let's observe the dirt, the worms, the twists, the darkness, the sacred and the profane. For a writing project, whether a short…
00:43:45 |
Mon 10 Jul 2023
Episode 128: Poetry and Questions of Peace - Zach Savich
Is peace the absence of conflict or a state that can exist within conflict? How can writing cultivate, reveal, practice, and advance personal and shared forms of peaceable assembly? What's the relati…
00:45:53 |
Thu 14 May 2020
Episode 127: Writing the Elegy - Challenges and Approaches - Suzan Aizenberg
Most of us who write feel the need to remember our dead in elegies, memoir, or fiction, a task that can be more difficult than we at first expect. Often our first challenge is to speak at all, to fin…
00:47:41 |
Tue 21 Apr 2020
Episode 126: Me, Myself and I - The Transformative Power of Reflection in Nonfiction - Juliet Patterson
We often think about the tool of reflection in writing as a mode of thought or tone of voice we employ when we ruminate, meditate, contemplate or explain—in short, when we provide what Phillip Gerard…
00:45:53 |
Fri 13 Mar 2020
Episode 129: Refine Your Writing With Attention to Style - Sandra Scofield
However creative and brilliant you are, your work is evaluated (consciously or not) for its style. We write in different styles, but all writing needs correct grammar and appropriate punctuation. Goo…
00:45:53 |
Fri 21 Feb 2020
Episode 125: Better Talky Talky - The Art and Craft of Strong Dialogue - Kelly Dwyer
Many book editors and agents say that they read the first paragraph of a manuscript, and if they like it, they skip ahead to read some dialogue. If the dialogue is strong, they go back to page one an…
00:47:46 |
Wed 12 Feb 2020
Episode 124: Notan - How Visual Art Informs Writing - Sandra Scofield
As a painter, I am constantly recognizing ideas about composition in art that speak directly to what I do as a writer. One concept that is especially useful is Notan, a Japanese term that means "ligh…
00:48:34 |
Wed 05 Feb 2020
Episode 123: Writing From the Central Channel - Diana Goetsch
The “central channel,” a somatic and energetic space well-known for centuries in contemplative disciplines, is rarely discussed in connection with writing. Understanding the central channel, and how …
00:38:30 |
Tue 21 Jan 2020
Episode 122: The Memory Curve and Transitions - Anna Bruno
The memory curve, on a most basic level, means the reader’s attention is highest at the beginning, dips in the middle, and goes up again at the end. When putting pen to paper for the first time, most…
00:42:21 |
Wed 18 Dec 2019
Episode 121: Writing and the Power of Now - Mary Allen
“The present moment is all you have,” as author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle says, and nowhere is this more the case than in writing. Successful narrative writing allows the reader to virtuall…
00:26:40 |
Mon 11 Nov 2019
Episode 120: Revising Like a Hack - Screenwriting "Rules" as a Guide for Rewrites - Kerry Howley
No one wants your story, essay, or poem to read like Fast and the Furious 9. But Hollywood formulae reflect a kind of science of narrative satisfaction, which can be transformative for a piece that i…
00:37:58 |
Mon 28 Oct 2019
Episode 119: The Writing Life - Christine Hemp
We’re all voyeurs when it comes to the habits and practices of other writers. Do they churn out a certain number of pages each week? Do they have a day job? A cat? A room of their own? What does the …
00:33:57 |
Mon 30 Sep 2019
Episode 118: The Music of Language, the Language of Music - Sands Hall
Poets and songwriters utilize aspects of language that are essential for prose writers to know. Take the slow, repeated vowels and consonants Joyce uses in “The Dead”: “…his soul swooned slowly as he…
00:36:58 |
Mon 16 Sep 2019
Episode 117: Writing About Family in Nonfiction - Mieke Eerkens
The most intimate, powerful, and fraught relationships in our lives are often with the limited inner circle we call family. For that reason, those relationships often feature heavily in our writing. …
00:29:42 |
Sun 08 Sep 2019
Episode 116: Transforming Life Into Writing - Eric Goodman
Transforming life into writing is an individual process, as individual as the art we create. Another way to think about this is how do we understand and explain the relationship of the real or actual…
00:31:00 |
Fri 23 Aug 2019
Episode 115: The Art of Humor Writing - Lyz Lenz
Chiaroscuro, in art, is a technique that uses bold contrasts of light and dark in painting to create vivid scenes and evoke emotion. It renders images almost three-dimensional. In writing, the bold u…
00:33:29 |
Wed 14 Aug 2019
Episode 114: Mixed Feelings - Lon Otto
In creative writing, truth isn’t everything, but emotional truth almost is. Whatever the genre, however familiar or strange the situation or action, readers need to believe that the emotions in a pie…
00:56:30 |
Fri 09 Aug 2019
Episode 113: Memoir from the Middle of Things - Zach Savich
This lecture will consider memoirs and essays written about events that are still unfolding. How can you tell a story when you don't know how it will end? How can you write about yourself when your r…
00:51:15 |
Wed 31 Jul 2019
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