When you study creative writing at Mount Mercy, you learn not only from your fellow students and our faculty, but also from the many prestigious writers who visit campus and share their expertise and vision.

Every year Mount Mercy University hosts four different visiting writers. During each visit, there is a Q&A — your time to ask the writers questions — and an evening reading — the writers' time to share their most recent work with you. You'll also have the chance to chat with the visiting writers over dinner or while they are signing your book.

Past visiting writers include poet laureates, award-winning journalists, best-selling novelists, and Oprah-picks.

Current Writers—Spring 2012

Patricia Foster
March 7
Q&A, 3:30, Flaherty
Reading, 7:00, Flaherty

Patricia Foster is the author of two books of nonfiction and the editor of three anthologies of nonfiction prose. Just beneath My Skin, her latest book, is a collection of essays that explores autobiography as a means of creative self-examination. Foster began her book publishing career with the anthology Minding the Body: Women Writers on Body and Soul, a book translated into German, Dutch and Portuguese, chosen as a QPB Paperback selection, and performed as a play by the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.

Foster is also a fiction writer and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has published both fiction and nonfiction in such literary quarterlies as the Gettysburg Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Iowa Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and Fourth Genre.

In 2003, Foster was an exchange professor at Paul Valery University in Montpellier, France. She is currently a Professor in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Iowa.

Benjamin Percy
April 12
Q&A, 3:30, Flaherty
Reading, 7:00, Flaherty

Benjamin Percy, “the new master of the grotesque,” is the author of two novels and two books of short stories. The title story of his collection Refresh, Refresh, won the Plimpton and Pushcart prizes and was anthologized in Best American Short Stories of 2006. About a young man whose father is fighting in Iraq, the story has also been made into a graphic novel.

Percy’s work has been read on National Public Radio, performed at Symphony Space, and published by Esquire, GQ, Men’s Journal, Outside, Paris Review, Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.

He teaches in the MFA program at Iowa State University and at the Low-Res MFA program at Pacific University. He has also taught as guest faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and regularly lectures at conferences and universities around the country.

Past Visiting Writers

Mount Mercy University has proudly hosted poet laureates; best-selling novelists; and writers who have won the National Book Award, the Booker Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Nobel Prize.

Fiction Writers
Sandra Benitez, Chris Bohjalian, Charles Baxter, Ethan Canin, Ana Castillo, Lan Samantha Chang, Stuart Dybek, Larry Heinemann, Khaled Hosseini, Bharati Mukherjee, Thisbe Nissen, ZZ Packer, Josef Skvorecky, Barry Unsworth, Mary Helen Stefaniak

Creative Nonfiction Writers and Journalists
Stephen Bloom, Joy Castro, Patricia Hampl, Alex Kotlowitz, John T. Price, Scott Russell Sanders

Poets
Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, Robert Haas, Ted Kooser, Li-Young Lee, Heather McHugh, Czeslaw Milosz, Naomi Shihab Nye, Susan Power, Gary Soto, William Stafford, Camille Dungy

"Visiting writers ...let you see and know the process of a professional." — Casey Birkecht '13 

"The joy of the Visiting Writers Program is always about connecting to a kindred soul. Aspiring writers are able to discuss their own fears and doubts with someone who has experienced the journey." — Kim Flugga-Ciha ’11