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Daniel Khalastchi
Title/Position
Director, Magid Center for Writing
Daniel Khalastchi is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A former fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he is the author of four books—The Story of Your Obstinate Survival (University of Wisconsin Press), American Parables (University of Wisconsin Press, winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry), Tradition (McSweeney’s), and Manoleria (Tupelo Press). His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Denvery Quarterly, Electric Literature, Granta, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, The Rumpus, and Best American Experimental Writing. Daniel has taught advanced writing and literature courses at Augustana College, Marquette University, Coe College, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He currently serves as Director of the University of Iowa’s Magid Center for Writing and is the cofounder and managing editor of Rescue Press. His recent awards include a residency at the Hermitage Artist Retreat. More information can be found at danielkhalastchi.com.
Mallory Hellman
Title/Position
Director, Iowa Youth Writing Project
Mallory Hellman (she/her) has served as the Director of the Iowa Youth Writing Project since 2015. Prior to that, she received an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a BA in English and American Literature from Harvard. Mallory's nonfiction has appeared in Tuesday Magazine, Forbes, and elsewhere. She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, the Duke University Talent Identification Program, and at K-12 schools, community centers, residential rehabilitation facilities, and shelters throughout the Midwest.
Gwyneth Forsythe
Title/Position
Education & Programming Coordinator VISTA
Gwyneth Forsythe graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with BAs in Theatre Arts and History. In the spring of 2021, she completed her MFA in Writing for the Stage and Screen from Northwestern University, where she won the Krevoy Screenwriting Prize for her television pilot, White Dog Rises. While in Chicago, Gwyneth produced several theatre productions, worked as a freelance writer, teaching artist, and adjunct faculty for the City Colleges of Chicago. Recently, she has returned to Iowa City to work with the IYWP and to write and produce more plays.
Stephen Lovely
Title/Position
Director, Iowa Young Writers' Studio
Stephen has been the Director of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio since 2005. He has led nineteen sessions of the program and hosted more than 1200 students. Stephen attended Kenyon College, where he majored in English, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied with Deborah Eisenberg, Margot Livesey, Ethan Canin, and Frank Conroy. His first novel, Irreplaceable, was published by Hyperion/Voice in 2009 and translated into German, Dutch, and Chinese. Irreplaceable received the Dana Award for the Novel and a James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award. Stephen lives in Iowa City, and is working on a second novel.
Amy Margolis
Title/Position
Director, Iowa Summer Writing Festival
Amy Margolis, Director, started her career with the Festival as a graduate assistant in 1990. She's directed the program since 2001. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She’s taught creative writing in the Festival, at the University of Iowa, and as a visiting writer in programs nationwide. Her fiction and nonfiction appear in The Iowa Review. Amy is currently at work on a memoir-in-shards about her life as a dancer in the late seventies, at the onset of the AIDS crisis. An excerpt from the memoir, "1978," was selected for inclusion in The Best American Essays 2024, forthcoming in October, 2024.
Becca Klaver
Title/Position
Program Manager, Iowa Summer Writing Festival
Becca Klaver is the author of several poetry collections and has taught at colleges, universities, and community programs such as Iowa City Poetry, the Midwest Writing Center, and the University of Chicago’s Writer’s Studio. She directed the Center for the Literary Arts at Cornell College, helped run the BA and MFA creative writing programs at Columbia College Chicago, and has independently hosted salons, talk series, and reading groups. As an editor, Becca co-founded Switchback Books and is co-editing the anthology Electric Gurlesque.
Alisa Weinstein
Title/Position
Program Coordinator, Iowa Summer Writing Festival
Alisa Weinstein received a BFA in Drama and MA in Educational Theatre from New York University, and a PhD in Anthropology from Syracuse University; she also studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and conducted dissertation research on a Fulbright-Nehru scholarship. Among her other writing, she authored scripts for India’s Sesame Street, Galli Galli Sim Sim, and is currently at work on an ethnography on tailors working in Jaipur, India. A co-founder of Home Ec. Workshop in Iowa City, she often teaches knitting and sewing to crafters of all ages. At the University of Iowa, she teaches an anthropology course on fashion and culture, and previously served as youth programs coordinator for the International Writing Program.
Jorge Guerra
Title/Position
Lecturer
Jorge Guerra is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in Latina/o/x Studies and the Magid Center for Writing at the University of Iowa. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Jorge Guerra received his B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing at California State University Long Beach. He is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was a Dean's Graduate Research Fellow.
His research includes the Guatemalan Coup D'état of 1954, US-Cold War involvement in Guatemala/Latin America, the disappearances of Guatemalans during the Guatemalan Civil War, and Central American immigration in the United States. He finished a collection of short stories and is currently working on a novel on the Guatemalan diaspora in California, Iowa, and Minnesota. At U Iowa, he has taught courses on creative writing, grammar writing, queer Latina/o/x studies, Latina/o/x film, Latinx immigration literature, and Introduction to Latina/o/x Studies.
Amy Parker
Title/Position
Lecturer
Amy Parker received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Meta-Rosenburg Fellow and a Teaching Writing Fellow. She has been awarded grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Marble House Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Clarion Foundation for her work in fiction. Her debut collection Beasts and Children was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2016, and she is currently at work on a novel. She has taught fiction and creative writing at the University of Iowa and Wichita State University.
Josh Parkinson
Title/Position
Iowa Writers' Room Alumni Board
Adjunct Instructor
Josh Parkinson is a writer from Texas who received an M.A. in fiction from Johns Hopkins University. Over the last dozen years he has written feature originals or rewrites for Warner Bros., Sony, Universal, Paramount, and Media Rights Capital, as well as held TV staff-writing positions on the HBO comedy EASTBOUND AND DOWN and the AMC horror series THE TERROR. He has also during that time sold both hour-long drama and half-hour comedy pilots to NBC, CBS, AMC, USA, Showtime, and most recently, Peacock. He continues to live and work in Los Angeles.
Erin Sherry
Title/Position
Visiting Assistant Professor
Erin Sherry received a BFA in fiction from Emerson College and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and Teaching Fellow at the Iowa Youth Writing Project. She was previously a publishing specialist at the youth literary organization 826 Boston, and has taught a variety of creative, professional, and community oriented writing courses at the University of Iowa and the Iowa Young Writers' Studio. Her fiction can be found in the Masters Review, the Adroit Journal, the Emerson Review, and Always Crashing.
Danielle Wheeler
Title/Position
Online Course Management Specialist
Danielle was the 2010-2011 Rona Jaffe fellow in poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she earned her MFA. Since that time, she's been an instructor of rhetoric, creative writing, and business writing at several institutions, both online and in-person, including IWYP, IYWS, and the Department of Rhetoric here at the University of Iowa.
Tracy Meginnis, MFA
Title/Position
Administrative Services Specialist
Tracy Meginnis has worked as an editor, writing instructor, English Language Arts test developer, and research project manager prior to their current role as Administrative Services Specialist in the Division of Interdisciplinary Programs. Tracy has an M.F.A. in Fiction from New Mexico State University and a B.A. in English with a Middle-Secondary Education concentration from Butler University. Their academic and personal projects have centered on folklore and oral history, creative writing pedagogy, print and online publishing, and video game development.
Lindsay Vella, MFA
Title/Position
Departmental Administrator, Magid Center for Writing
Lindsay Vella is the Departmental Administrator for African American Studies, American Studies, Classics, the Division of Interdisciplinary Programs, Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies, the Magid Center for Writing, and Religious Studies. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa.