Sun, Apr 20 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM
Iowa City, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, IA 52240, USA

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: Lauren Lilia Childs is a first-year MFA candidate in the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program. Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, she developed a keen curiosity in intuition and the natural world at a young age and started journaling before she could spell. Her years of training in sense memory and acting at The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York City continue to inform and shape her writing and teaching. She is The Englert’s 2025 Nonfiction Writing Fellow and a member of the Screen Actors Guild in Los Angeles. Her essays have been published in Entropy Magazine, Litro Magazine, Bamboo Ridge: Journal of Hawaiʻi Literature and Arts and elsewhere.