University of Iowa

Cecile Goding

Cecile Goding is from a small county in South Carolina, where she coordinated adult literacy efforts before moving to Iowa City. She is also from New England, Saudi Arabia, and the Silicon Valley. For her poems, she has won the Theodore Roethke and Richard Hugo prizes, a fellowship from the South Carolina Academy of Poets, and a Bread Loaf scholarship. Her poetry, essays and short fiction have appeared in anthologies, journals, newspapers, and on small screens. Recent projects involve a memoir, a collaboration with an Arabic writer on a fiction collection, and a sci-fi opera.

Instructor Events

Call and Response: A Workshop in Correspondence Writing

Weeklong June 23 to June 28 2019
Instructor(s): 
Cecile Goding

What can you say in a 500-word paragraph? Or in 200 words? When you show that paragraph to another writer, what might they create, sparked by a memory or a phrase of yours they have just now read? Whatever it is, you can’t wait to see it. You can’t wait to write back. There. You have begun a different way of responding to the work of another. Can we write a whole book like this? Yes, we can. During this writing retreat, we will not read manuscripts. We will not so much comment on others’ work directly, although we may have suggestions.

After the Bell: A Workshop for Schoolteachers

Weekend July 27 to July 28 2019
Instructor(s): 
Cecile Goding

Before I came to Iowa, back in the South Carolina county where I grew up, I became a teacher. Specifically, I taught those who had left school early on and later decided to give education a second look. Those brave, funny students—no one has taught me more. What exactly I learned is a question worth a lifetime. For one weekend at least, let’s write in the company of fellow teachers. Together, let’s give our school experiences a good airing-out. What sustained us in that complex microcosm known as the classroom?