Leading with ‘a gentle hand’

On a rainy afternoon near the close of the spring semester, a cluster of University of Iowa students gathered on the second floor of the campus' modest Dey House clutching copies of their work.

Lan Samantha Chang, known by most of the 100-some students in the internationally acclaimed Iowa Writers' Workshop as 'Sam,” leaned out of her office.

'Are you all here for me?” she asked.

They were. And Chang made time to see everyone.

As she approaches her 10th year as director of the program that has produced 17 Pulitzer Prize winners, numerous National Book Award honorees, three U.S. Poet Laureates, and garnered a lot of recent publicity through popular TV shows such as 'Girls” on HBO and 'Mike & Molly,” Chang said that part - choosing a crop of talented students and working with them - is among her favorite aspects of the job.

'They put their most sincere effort into doing what they love to do,” Chang said.

Having earned a bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies from Yale University, a master's in public administration from Harvard University and a master of fine arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Chang was chosen in 2005 to become the program's fifth director - and its first female leader - after her predecessor, acclaimed writer Frank Conroy, died.

During her tenure, Chang has graduated numerous acclaimed authors and received praise from industry experts and former graduates for her 'unostentatious” style and passion for nurturing young writers.

Even as some critics recently have accused today's master of fine arts programs, including the UI's, of producing 'unambitious, formulaic” prose, some of Chang's former students have lauded her leadership technique and openness to different styles.

'Her workshop is a conversation, one that includes and listens to every person in the room,” Eleanor Catton, an Iowa workshop graduate and 2013 Booker Prizewinner, has written. 'If there's showboating or intimidation, it doesn't come from her.”

Chang, an award-winning fiction writer, told The Gazette that she doesn't think her leadership style has changed much in the past decade. But, she said, the demands of her job have. She's tasked with more administrative busy work than when she began.

'And that has interfered with my writing a lot,” Chang said. 'Because a lot of the bureaucratic detail has fallen on me, I haven't been able to get very much work done.”

Chang said recent proposals to cut the UI's state appropriations could hurt the school's famed writing program and further alter her job, preventing her from focusing on the aspects she loves - admissions, teaching, speaking, fundraising and writing.

In light of those changes, Chang said, she doesn't know how long she'll remain in her current position.

'It depends on if I can get some work done,” she said.

‘My life wouldn't be the same'

Growing up in Appleton, Wis., as a first generation Chinese-American, Chang said she felt the call early in life to be a writer.

'I knew at age 4 that I had a special attachment to books,” she said. 'I was a veracious reader.”

Chang said she felt some pressure to follow a more traditionally lucrative career path, so she enrolled as a law student. But, Chang said, 'I sensed I couldn't be happy.”

'So I changed course,” she said.

That move brought her to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Chang said the program left a life-altering impression as it immersed her for the first time in an environment dedicated to creativity.

'It was housed at the University of Iowa because it was visionary enough to make a home for it,” she said. 'My life wouldn't be the same without having been here.”

When the opportunity arose for her to return, Chang was a professor at Harvard, and she knew stepping in as director of the Iowa program would interfere with her writing.

'But I wanted someone directing the workshop who cared about it,” Chang said, 'and I knew I did.”

In addition to fostering the creative community with which she'd fallen in love, Chang said she focused on increasing the program's aesthetic and cultural diversity and securing funding for every student.

‘A gentle hand'

Some of Chang's proudest achievements as director of program come in the form of her graduates' accomplishments.

Among the numerous now notable authors who've passed through Chang's program are Catton, who submitted to Chang's workshop the story that later become the Booker Prize-winning 'The Luminaries,” and Ayana Mathis, whose family novel, 'The Twelve Tribes of Hattie,” became a New York Times best seller and was chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her book club.

Mathis told The Gazette that she found Chang to be an 'incredible director, motivating and energizing.” She said Chang has a clear and bold vision of the program's mission and is committed to every student who passes through.

She praised Chang's push to increase diversity so that the workshop reflects 'the diversity of the nation whose literature it will influence.”

But, according to Mathis, Chang's signature mark as director of the program is her ability to run the program 'with a gentle hand without sacrificing rigor or the caliber of the students.”