The Free Generative Writing Workshop for January

Co-sponsored by PorchLight and Iowa City Poetry, the Free Generative Writing Workshops provide a space for career writers, curious beginners, writers of all income levels and stages of life. Our goal is to make it easy to meet and learn from some of the most talented writer/teachers living in or passing through Iowa City. Every month a new writer leads a generative workshop, presenting a prompt inspired by their own preoccupations, passions, or interests. It has been an adventure, and we are continually inspired by the creative concentration of participants, and the powerful beginnings the workshop generates.

This month's leader:

Margaret MacInnis holds MFA degrees from the University of Iowa (NWP ’09) and Queens University of Charlotte (’04). Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in Brevity, Diagram, Fifty-Word Stories, Fractured Literary, Ghost Parachute, Mutha Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, and Tiny Molecules. Longer work appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast Review, Mid-American Review, River Teeth, Tampa Review and elsewhere. Nominated for three Pushcart prizes, she has received notable distinction in Best American Essays (2007, 2009, & 2011) and Best American Non-Required Reading (2009). Margaret was the 2007 William Raney Scholar in Nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and has served on the Prose Admissions Committee for the conference. She has been a VCCA Fellow, both in Virginia and France, and was in residence at the Kimmel Nelson Center for the Arts. She has taught Introduction to Creative Nonfiction at the University of Iowa, where she also served as an editorial assistant at The Iowa Review. In addition to facilitating One True Voice Generative Writing Workshops, she tutors in the Writing Center at Kirkwood Community College and is the managing editor of Milspeak Books. Since 2010 Margaret has been raising a daughter and working as Marilynne Robinson’s personal assistant.

​ Find out more about the Free Generative Workshops at https://www.freegenerative.org