We're proud to announce that our 2012 Fall Residents have arrived! Coming from far and wide, these incoming writers have spent this early part of the week getting acclimated to their new environment, have gone thorugh the IWP's orientation program, and have celebrated their arrival with a wonderful reception held at IWP Director Christopher Merrill's Iowa City home.

Round III of the IWP's introduction to our 2012 Fall Residents includes writers from Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Maruitius, the Philippines, and Slovakia. More announcements will be made on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of next week!

It's Wednesday and, as promised, here's Round II of our 2012 Fall Residency Announcements!

Today's installment features writers from Kuwait, South Korea, Germany, Taiwan, and Greece. To learn when and where you can see these writers share their work, participate in panel discussions, and screen films, be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter (@UIIWP), and, of course, feel free to visit us at the IWP's Homepage.

In three weeks, the IWP's 46th annual Fall Residency will bring 32 writers from 29 countries to Iowa City where they will have time, space, and freedom to write. As ever, they'll also have ample opportunitiy to engage with the public, to travel to other cities and states, to give public readings of their work, and to immerse themselves in the writing life in North America's only UNESCO-designated City of Literature.

IWP intern extraordinnaire Emily Seiple has spent most of July assisting Between the Lines Coordinator Kecia Lynn, and boy have the two of them been busy. From June 30th through July 14th, the IWP hosted a wonderful group of Russian and American students who together participated in creative writing workshops, attended literary salons, film screenings, and readings, and who, when all was said and done, left Iowa City knowing something more of themselves as writers and of each other's cultures.

As our current cohort of Between the Lines students continue to live, write, study, and engage one another in Iowa City, we thought it was a great time to share this guest blog post from one of last year's BTL students, Maïsa Farid, who came to Iowa last summer from Morocco. 

Currently in its fourth year, the Life of Discovery exchange program beween the International Writing Program (IWP) and the China Writers' Association (CWA) brings together young American and Chinese poets, fiction writers, and playwrights to discuss literature, translation, and culture, and to engage in mutual creative writing projects. Through exchange and dialogue, IWP and CWA writers learn something of the each country's literature, form friendships, and mutually create new work. Sponsored through grant funds provided by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S.

On Going Home is the name we've given to a short series of essays by our 2011 fall residents. We commissioned the pieces because we wanted to keep in touch and because we were curious to know what the process of returning home was like for authors who'd spent nearly three months in the U.S. writing, researching, travelling, and interacting with Americans. We also asked the authors to send us a photograph that somehow represented "home" in some fundamental way.

Our friends at Sampsonia Way recently published this wonderful interactive feature on their blog in celebration of National Poetry Month.

On Going Home is the name we've given to a short series of essays by our 2011 fall residents. We commissioned the pieces because we wanted to keep in touch and because we were curious to know what the process of returning home was like for authors who'd spent nearly three months in the U.S. writing, researching, travelling, and interacting with Americans. We also asked the authors to send us a photograph that somehow represented "home" in some fundamental way. This installment of the series comes from Zoë