The Grant Wood Art Colony is hosting two instructors of the Belin-Blank Center Summer Writing Residency. From July 8 through July 27, students in grades 9-11 are participating in the Summer Writing Residency, an immersive 3–week residency at the University of Iowa. The Undergraduate Creative Writing Program, under the Direction of Robyn Schiff, is partnering with the Belin-Blank Center to provide an exciting program designed for talented high school writers from across the country. 

The Colony welcomes two Writers' Workshop graduates, Monica and Mary, back to the university.

Monica Bergers, Fiction Instructor

Monica Bergers graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with an MFA in Fiction, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow and awarded a Glenn Schaeffer Fellowship. She also studied at the University of Missouri-Columbia and earned an MA in English Literature. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and two Best New American Voices prizes, and has been published in New South, Five Chapters, and The Chariton Review, among others. She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and currently teaches fiction workshops at the Indiana Writers Center.

Mary Hickman, Poetry Instructor

Mary Hickman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the author of two books of poetry, This Is the Homeland (Ahsahta Press, 2015) and Rayfish (Omnidawn Publications, 2017), which won the 2016 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and two chapbooks, Ecce Animot (Projective Industries, 2012) and How to Be Healthy and Heal (Cosa Nostra Editions, 2011). Her work has been featured as a Boston Review Poet's Sampler and in the PEN America Poetry Series. Her poems and essays have also appeared in numerous journals, including Colorado Review, Fourteen Hills, jubilat, and Sonora Review. She recently read in Turkey and Armenia with the US Department of State's American Writers on Tour program. A recipient of the Elizabeth Dietz Best Essay Prize, an Iowa Arts Fellowship, and two Iowa Arts Council Awards, she is currently finishing a dissertation on 20th century US poetry and the artist's book.