A modest Victorian house on a slope north of the river is the headquarters of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the oldest creative-writing graduate program in the United States and the spine of Iowa City's claim to literary importance. Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, Marilynne Robinson, Raymond Carver, Kurt Vonnegut, and a long list of poets and novelists have either studied or taught here.
Dey House itself is small and not open to casual visitors, but the readings the Workshop organises at Prairie Lights are free, frequent, and very often excellent — check the bookstore's calendar.