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.