International Writing Program Loses State Department Funding

On Thursday, the University of Iowa announced a funding cut for the International Writing Program founded by Paul and Hualing Nieh Engle in 1967.

The U.S. Department of State notified the University of Iowa International Writing Program on Feb. 26 that its grants through the department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs were being terminated, stating that the awards “no longer effectuate agency priorities,” nor align “with agency priorities and national interest.” (U.S. Department of State halts International Writing Program funding, Iowa NOW, March 7, 2025).

Termination of funding caused immediate elimination or curtailment of multiple planned activities. While I viewed the program as a vanity project by its founders, the IWP added to the cachet of Iowa City as a writing community. In the early days of the program, the IWP housed its writers at the Mayflower dormitory as a method of creating community. It was that. Indeed, more than 1,600 established writers from more than 160 countries have participated since the program was founded, according to Iowa NOW. The annual funding loss will be almost $1 million. That amount doesn’t seem like a lot, and could likely be made up through a new fundraising effort by Director Christopher Merrill. I hope the program endures.

I remember attending a lecture by Merrill when he described traveling to exotic locales to find writers for the IWP. I suppose his recruitment methods were considered favorably by the State Department at the time and that is why the grant was renewed year after year. In a society where many close friends are being impacted by federal budget cuts today, losing funding at the IWP is just one more thing.

When I finished graduate school in 1981, I decided to stay in Iowa City and live a writer’s life. I had no interest in formal writing programs and carried a bit of residual skepticism about the Writers’ Workshop and the IWP from my days living with some Actualist writers and artists I met in 1973 and ‘74. Instead of following a formal program, I sought to enable my native, if somewhat naive impulses and culture. I hoped to discover what that meant, yet not in the context of formal writing programs. Except for the impact on local culture, it made no difference to me whether the IWP existed in 1981, and that feeling continues through today.

It seems clear that many activities in our culture, from education to farming, to health care, to every aspect of involvement by the federal government are subject to game-changing loss of funding. The IWP can recover from this setback. What about the rest of us?