The University of Iowa

Nancy K. Barry

Nancy K. Barry (Ph.D., University of Illinois) is a playwright and essayist who teaches creative nonfiction writing at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Her essays have appeared in Iowa Woman, the Chicago Tribune, and the Baltimore Sun. Her one-woman show, Lessons from Cancer College, details a year spent as a teacher undergoing treatment for breast cancer. She has been the host of a radio show on writing (“The Naked Page”) and a podcast, “Writing Out Loud.”

Instructor Events

Talk to Your Draft about Your Draft: A Workshop in Deep Revision in Nonfiction

Weeklong July 12 to July 17 2020
Instructor(s): 
Nancy K. Barry

Do you have a nonfiction manuscript that you know needs revision but you’re not certain exactly how to go about it? This workshop allows you to learn and practice a time-honored strategy used by writers, whereby we “annotate” and remark on the draft as if it were written by someone else. This skill takes practice, but it yields a powerful tonic when we think there is no way out of a manuscript that is giving us fits. This workshop is intended to help any writer who is stuck on what, how, and when to revise a memoir, essay, or creative nonfiction piece.

Whose Voice Is This? A Primer on Style

Weekend July 18 to July 19 2020
Instructor(s): 
Nancy K. Barry

Most writers and readers will tell you that to have an engaging style, we need to capture the sound of a “real person speaking,” but it is equally true that good prose is not merely writing down what people say. How do we navigate getting the sound and resonance of our “style” down on the page, and how would we even begin to describe the sound we’re trying to achieve? This workshop provides an entry into defining and manipulating prose styles.