By Jordan ryder
[email protected]

Undergraduate students coming to the University of Iowa with a desire to write run into a problem: Outside of basic workshop classes, there aren’t many places to go and share writing and work with fellow writers. So they write in a vacuum, maybe with a few others they’ve managed to find.

But there is a place, in the Writing Center, 110 EPB, in which the Creative Writing Group meets at 2 p.m. on Fridays. It is a place without the constraints of being a student in which a writer can focus on being a writer.

“This is a good opportunity to be a practicing writer,” said UI graduate student Laura Ferris. “A group like this is special because it allows approaching writing the best way, not as a student.”

Writers’ Workshop alum Ferris, a current M.F.A. candidate in literary translation, leads the group through teaching writing principles and assigning writing exercises. For a current meeting, they worked on a “day-in-the-life-of” character exercise to work on making detailed characters.

“I try to bring a relaxed energy to the group,” Ferris said. “I provide some structure, but people also work best with personal freedom.”

Unlike a traditional workshop class that sticks to one mode of writing, members are free to pursue whatever project is of interest to them: fiction, poetry, nonfiction, memoir, plays, or translation.    

Writers of all skill levels are welcome as well. Elijah Thompson-Acquah, a freshman who has only attend for a month, has seen improvements.

“I have more confidence in my writing,” he said. “It is a friendly group that helps you build your skills and confidence.”

Confidence in writing is important, especially for someone such as Thompson-Acquah, who wants to make a career out of writing and directing screenplays. Right now, he focuses on making satire out of innocuous things through poetry and fiction.

Another member, Devin Van Dyke, loves going every week.

“It’s fun — no pressure or grades, which really helps me learn,” he said.

Van Dyke has been writing with the group for five years. He writes a variety of fiction but right now is working on a “memoir-type project.”

“The skill of looking at other’s work helps me be critical toward my own,” he said.

Anyone with even a passing interest in writing is encouraged to attend, Van Dyke said. It offers the opportunity to work alongside other writers and get feedback every week on their work.

“Please come to writing group, so I can have more stuff to read,” he said.