The Free Gen with Bela Shayevich

Co-sponsored by PorchLight and Iowa City Poetry, the Free Generative Writing Workshops provide a space for career writers, curious beginners, writers of all income levels and stages of life. Our goal is to make it easy to meet and learn from some of the most talented writer/teachers living in or passing through Iowa City. Every month a new writer leads a generative workshop, presenting a prompt inspired by their own preoccupations, passions, or interests. It has been an adventure, and we are continually inspired by the creative concentration of participants, and the powerful beginnings the workshop generates.

Bela Shayevich is a Soviet-American writer and translator and recent graduate of the University of Iowa's MFA in Nonfiction Writing Program. Her latest book is Elena Kostyuchenko's I Love Russia, co-translated with Ilona Yabzhin. She is also the translator of Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time, and Vsevolod Nekrasov's I Live I See (with Ainsley Morse).  Her writing has appeared in n+1, Jewish Currents, and Harper's.