A Delicate Aggression: Savagery and Survival in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Audiobook (Free)

A vibrant background of the renowned and frequently controversial Iowa Authors’ Workshop and its own celebrated alumni and faculty

As the world’s preeminent creative writing plan, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop has produced an astonishing amount of distinguished writers and poets since its establishment in 1936. Its alumni and faculty consist of twenty-eight Pulitzer Prize winners, six US poet laureates, and numerous National Publication Award winners. This volume follows the program from its rise to prominence in the first 1940s under director Paul Engle, who promoted the “workshop” approach to class room peer criticism.

Designed to simulate the rigors of editorial and critical scrutiny in the publishing industry, this educational design created an environment of both competition and community, assistance and rivalry. Focusing on a number of the exceptional authors who have participated in the program-such as Flannery O’Connor, Dylan Thomas, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Smiley, Sandra Cisneros, T. C. Boyle, and Marilynne Robinson-David Dowling examines the way the Iowa Authors’ Workshop offers formed professional authorship, publishing industries, as well as the course of American literature.