Despite cuts, 23 writers arriving this week for UI International Writing Program residency

Against the odds, 23 writers from international destinations like Spain, Kosovo, Saudi Arabia, and Israel are scheduled to arrive in Iowa City on Wednesday for a 10-week fall residency through the renowned University of Iowa International Writing Program.

Pulling together this year’s crop of novelists, poets, journalists, and playwrights was an onerous feat for the program’s skeleton staff after the U.S. Department of State on Feb. 26 terminated the IWP’s nearly $1 million in grants through the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Explaining the grants “no longer effectuate agency priorities” or align with “agency priorities and national interest,” the federal cuts forced the IWP — the oldest and largest multicultural writing residency in the world — to cancel its summer youth program, dissolve its exchange programming for American writers, end its distance learning courses, and discontinue a mentorship program for displaced or sheltering writers.

In an effort to salvage the IWP’s core fall residency program — which over 58 years has hosted more than 1,600 writers from more than 160 countries — program Director Christopher Merrill scraped together a hodgepodge of grants, gifts, and foreign support for this term’s pared down cohort of 23, which is about two-thirds of its usual 35 writers.

“Interestingly, all the writers got visas, which is kind of amazing,” Merrill said. “And none has raised concerns about traveling to the U.S. at this time, which was frankly a surprise. I was going to guess that some writers might be careful about coming here at this time, and the fact that they haven't raised any concerns makes me particularly excited because I would say that their spirit of adventure and curiosity has won out over whatever concerns they might have for their physical well-being here.”

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The IWP’s halved budget includes a $250,000 donation from Florida megadonor Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr., a former U.S. attorney in Miami — who committed the matching gift in the spring after hearing about the paralyzing cuts.

“We've had a fair amount of luck securing individual grants,” Merrill said. “And we're hoping the good-faith effort that we’ve made will impress not only Hugh Culverhouse Jr. … but it seems to have secured a certain number of multiyear pledges of support.”

In the short term, Merrill said, he aims to sustain what IWP programming he can on philanthropy, grants, and collaboration -- like with Beyond Baroque, a 57-year-old poetry venue in Venice, Calif. that’s agreed to partner with the IWP for some digital offerings.

“My hope has been that we survive a couple of years and sort out different ways of funding the program and hope that at some point some sanity will return to Washington and we might see a different way of thinking in the State Department,” he said. “At some point there’s got to be a dose of reality, or else the experiment in liberty that we’ve been conducting for the last 250 years — we might see it come to an end.”

‘Quite terrible’

News of an IWP fall residency cohort arriving this week — with plans to stay through Oct. 30 — comes after the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences last week announced the end of its Magid Center for Writing, along with the center’s Iowa Summer Writing Festival and the Iowa Youth Writing Project.

Due to “ongoing funding challenges” both those Magid-based programs will be discontinued at the end of the calendar year, according to an announcement from the college.

“As these programs comprise the majority of Magid Center initiatives, the center itself will conclude with the creation of the Office of Writing and Communication,” which the university unveiled July 24.

Last week, UI administrators named Magid Center for Writing Director Daniel Khalastchi as that new office’s executive director and moved its undergraduate writing certificate into the School of Journalism and Mass Communication effective Jan. 1.

Additionally, the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio — a Magid-based creative writing program for high school students — will continue as part of the provost’s office under the new Office of Writing and Communication.

“The loss of the Summer Writing Festival is really quite terrible,” Merrill said of the news. “I know how important it has been to have a space for other kinds of writers to experience some of the Iowa magic. I am glad that the Iowa Writers Studio is still going, but the loss of the Magid Center is very worrying.”

Writers arriving

Speaking to the list of 23 international writers arriving in town this week, Merrill said they include a playwright from South Korea, a Ukrainian poet, and a Saudi novelist known for her debut novel, “Girls of Riyadh.”

Trained in dentistry at Northwestern University, Rajaa Alsanea is taking leave from her full-time clinician position in Riyadh to come to the UI residency.

The list of participants can be found at https://iwp.uiowa.edu/residency/participants.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com