Former Director of Iowa Writers' Workshop Dies
The New York Times this morning ran an Obit on Jack Leggett, long time director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In the obituary, it quotes Leggett saying that when he took over the program in 1970 there were a lot of kids out of the army and the Peace Corps enrolling. “They were an undisciplined lot,” he told the Times in a 1979. “They’d say: ‘Don’t tell me about form.’” Among the RPCVs that I know of who attended the Iowa program (and I know there are many more) are Phil Damon (Ethiopia 1963-65); Kent Haruf (Turkey 1965-67); Richard Wiley (Korea 1967-69);Chuck Lustig (Colombia 1967-68); Bob Shacochis. In the TIMES article, Bob Shacochis is quoted, “If it can be said that any one person was responsible for Iowa City being celebrated as the center of gravity for the workshop culture in the literary life of America, that person was Jack . . .
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Jack Leggett was my teacher and, later, my friend. I attended the Workshop from 1970-72, after I was in the…