The Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa is thrilled to welcome Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor, Jenny Boully for the spring 2026 semester. A poet and essayist, Boully was a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in General Nonfiction. 

Boully will teach an undergraduate course on creative writing and an essay writing workshop for graduate students. The Nonfiction Writing Program will host a reading of her work on Friday, February 27, at 7 p.m. 

Boully's most recent book, Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life, was called, “a supple and suggestive volume, one dedicated to multiplying literary possibilities even as it names and forcefully critiques the economic and institutional forces that construct and constrain such possibility," by the Georgia Review.

Boully earned a PhD in English from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, an MFA from the University of Notre Dame and an MA in English Writing and Criticism from Hollins University. She is a faculty member of Bennington College and the Bennington Writing Seminars.