Story: Sara Epstein Moninger
Photography: Tim Schoon and Jason Smith
Published: Oct. 20, 2026
During her first semester in the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, Riley Ryan-Wood encountered an essay that stopped her short.
A classmate had rearranged the timeline of events in a piece, a choice that startled Ryan-Wood. “I was like, ‘Wait, what? What is this?’” she recalls.
Rather than declare the approach right or wrong, the professor asked the class to consider the writer’s choices and their effect on the reader.
“That discussion definitely cracked my mind open,” says Ryan-Wood, now in her third and final year of the MFA program. “I didn’t know you could do that in nonfiction.”
That sense of discovery has animated the Nonfiction Writing Program for 50 years, challenging generations of writers to reconsider what the genre can be — and giving them the freedom to find out for themselves.