One of the greatest living novelists in the country has announced her retirement from the University of Iowa.
Marilynne Robinson, the F. Wendell Mills Professor of Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, has announced that Friday will mark her last class at the UI.
Robinson has worked at the Workshop, which has been consistently ranked as the nation’s No. 1 creative-writing program, for 25 years. She has taught graduate fiction workshops as well as seminars on Shakespeare, Faulkner, the Bible, and Melville.
Robinson is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila.
Robinson has been announced the winner of the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
Winning awards is nothing new for Robinson. She was also awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005 and she received the National Humanities Medal from U.S. President Obama in 2012.
“Marilynne has had a profound impact on both the fiction writers and poets who have studied at the Writers’ Workshop during her tenure and also an impact, in a broader sense, on American arts and letters through her service at the University of Iowa,” said Lan Samantha Chang, an acclaimed author and the director of the Writers’ Workshop.
Chang said she was a former student of Robinson’s.
“She always contributed generously to the program while her increasing fame pulled her in different directions,” she said.
Chang said the retirement does not mark the end of Robinson’s writing.
“She’s not going to stop writing. She wants to write more,” she said. “That’s good news for everyone.”
Jake Andrews, a UI adjunct assistant professor and a colleague of Robinson’s, said Robinson’s work appeals to people on a multitude of levels.
“She’s not just writing really good fiction in a technical sense but also fiction that engages with notions such as the soul and religion as it shows up in American history,” he said. “Her work — fictional and nonfictional alike — takes very seriously that the American project is one that is deeply considered and deeply spiritual.”
Makayla Steiner, a doctoral candidate at the UI and former student of Robinson, said the author’s work is noticeable because of its tone.