What could have been a soggy affair on Friday afternoon, ended up being a perfectly sunny and surprisingly emotional celebration for the nearly 80 students, faculty, emeriti, alumni, friends, passersby, and university administrators who attended the dedication of the Nonfiction Writing Program’s gorgeous new building on Friday, September 22.
“Have you all noticed that the sun has just come out in time for this special event?” asked Lynette Marshall upon taking the stage.
As the chief executive office of the University of Iowa’s Center for Advancement, Marshall oversaw the five-year-long fundraising effort to build the NWP’s new 5,000-square-foot home, noting in her remarks that most of the building’s primary donors were extraordinary individuals who needed little convincing to help construct the program’s new extraordinary space.
The NWP House is in fact the first building on the University of Iowa campus to be entirely funded through private donations, a remarkable feat that is even more remarkable due to that fact that 70% of the program’s alumni contributed to its construction as well.
For those who couldn’t be in attendance, therefore—and thus missed out on the greatest swag bags outside of Oscars season!—we have gathered each of the speeches from that afternoon’s event, which included Lynette Marshall, University of Iowa President Barbara Wilson, Associate Dean Roland Racevskis, Director John D’Agata, NWP 1998, and Third-Year student Sarah Khatry, NWP 2024.
First we present President Wilson's speech.
President Wilson:
"Thank you, all of you, for joining us today for this special moment. I think it's really apt that the rain went away, and the sun is trying to peek out on this gorgeous afternoon to celebrate such a monumental occasion.
I'm really excited to be here. As we all know, this is the writing university. I talk about it all the time. And I’m happy to say that we’re once again ranked among the top ten schools for writing in the U.S., and the only public university in that top ten. Tied again with Yale, in fact, so we’re in good company!
I’ve started calling this street Writers Row, here beside the International Writing Program, the Writers Workshop, and the Translation and Spanish Writing programs just down the block. This is a corridor of writing expertise and excellence that nobody else in the country can imitate, and that's something that I’m really proud of, because writing infuses everything we do.
As Lynette said, we watched this building grow from nothing to what it is today, right there, from the President’s House across the street. And at first, I’ll be honest, we were a little upset because we were going to lose some green space, but now we have something even better, I think, which is a great neighbor in the NWP. I look out the window at night and I can see classrooms across the street, and I can see faculty in their offices. But don’t worry, I’m not peeping at you! I just love seeing the activity here and knowing that we have provided such a great space for the incredible work that that the Nonfiction Writing Program does.
Congratulations to all of the faculty and staff and students who were patient about this great enterprise and who have now really just inhabited this building in the best possible way. It's beautiful inside. If you haven't had a chance to go in, please do and walk around. Look at the art, look at the furniture, look at the space. It's all been created with a lot of love and careful attention to creativity, which is what we are all about."