Amy Margolis, Director, joined the Festival in 1990. She received her M.F.A. from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow in fiction. She has taught writing both as part of the Festival and to undergraduates at The University of Iowa. Amy is from Kansas City, where everything matches.

Caryl Pagel has worked with the Festival since 2005. She holds an M.F.A. from both the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A chapbook of her work, Visions, Crisis Apparitions, and Other Exceptional Experiences, was published last spring by Factory Hollow Press, and individual poems have recently appeared in Denver Quarterly, New Orleans Review, Parcel, and Thermos. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Jeanne Stoakes holds a B.A. in Sociology from Drake University. Hers is usually the first voice you hear when you call to inquire about the Festival, not your typical electronic/digital voice. Jeanne lives in the heartland of Johnson County off of a gravel road with her favorites: Patrick, the basset hounds, the cats, the roosters and the gardens.   

Kate Aspengren coordinates the weekend sessions for the Festival and is a long-time faculty member in the program. She encourages you to read about her educational and teaching background on the page with her workshop descriptions. She’d like to use this space to tell you that she lives in Coralville with a pair of elderly retired racing greyhounds. She’s written about flight, cowgirls, whales, and apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Kate irons everything she wears. Really.