The Prison Writing Workshop -- The workshop meets once a week on Fridays during the semester, in the Fort Dodge Prison in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Established by Steve Pett and David Zimmerman five years ago, this non-fiction workshop brings together a small number of interested inmates with a handful of MFA students. The workshop's shared environment provides a space in which writers from all walks of life share stories with each other, write and read short essays, and talk about how writing impacts their lives.

Flyway: a Journal of Environment -- Flyway is overseen by Steve Pett, and staffed by current MFA students. The journal offers our students professional editorial and publishing experience, as well as insight into the behind the scenes workings of an established literary magazine. http://flyway.org/submissionG.html

Faculty Information Sessions -- These sessions, held once in the Fall semester and twice in the Spring, provide MFA students with valuable insight into and tips about the writing life. In these sessions, our celebrated faculty speak from personal experience (in writing, editing, teaching, and publishing) about topics of our choice. Session topics are chosen by CWM, based on popular demand: upcoming sessions will include suggestions about how to utilize the MFA in the real world (aka, how to get a job), tips on submitting stories, poems, and essays to journals, and (geared for those completing their thesis) tips on acquiring an agent and marketing your manuscript to publishers.

Field-Work Presentations -- In Spring semester, students who have completed their field-work during the passed year give a public reading from their work, along with a presentation about their experience. These presentations are a chance for students to share their writing with a wider audience, and a forum in which incoming students gather ideas about what they might do for their own field-work. Recent presentations include: Kim Rogers' "Just Over the Border: Returning to Zimbabwe Six Years Later."