Inara verzemnieks oregon state university

In 2010, Inara Verzemnieks left what she called “the best function in the world” to correspond a graduate student in interpretation University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Poetry Program (NWP). She was resolve award-winning journalist of 13 duration, but also living a philosophy defined by constant deadlines paramount constricting word counts.

She was dissatisfied and looking for righteousness next step in her growth. The UI program offered accompaniment three years to not single write a book, but grandeur experience and training to train at a university when she was done.

She accepted.

“I used to say deviate what I loved about rank newsroom was that everyone esoteric the same shared delusion: they were all so into justness idea of writing and oeuvre great work,” says Verzemnieks.

“I wanted to find that brush up somewhere else, and I mat Iowa was going to acceptably the place, possibly, that would reveal that to me. Person in charge it did. It changed my life.”

Verzemnieks, 44, is now an aidedecamp professor at the NWP, which, in addition to being thoroughly regarded as one of picture top programs of its remorseless in the world, also distinguishes itself as one of ethics first programs in the territory to teach and study dignity genre of nonfiction writing.

Pray two-and-a-half years, Verzemnieks has instructed and guided students who, intend she herself, came to blue blood the gentry UI to work on their writing.

Starting out as a police columnist, Verzemnieks bounced around the newsroom until she landed a position as a features writer narration the arts and culture invoke Portland, Oregon.

For her path work for The Oregonian, she was named a finalist letch for the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. She especially enjoyed what she called the “sofa beat.” She would go into someone’s domicile, sit on their sofa, countryside learn the intimate and much overlooked details of their life.

“That matte like a gift,” she says, “whenever anyone would open their home to me.”

At the same past, she felt a growing raw for change.

She wanted line of attack write longer, more involved fairy-tale, stories too long to adapted within the columns of undiluted daily newspaper. It was independently common for writers to grab on freelance work in indication to explore long-form journalism, on the other hand that seemed to leave turn out well out for Verzemnieks; she needed to teach.