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HOMECOMING: The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop will usher in a new director next year. Lan Samantha Chang, a fiction writer who attended and taught at the workshop and now teaches at Harvard University, will return to Iowa City to assume the directorship in January.
Ms. Chang, 40, will succeed Frank Conroy, who announced last summer his intention to step down as director this May, but died April 6. Mr. Conroy, who suffered from colon cancer, had led the program for 18 years. He first gained literary fame with his 1967 memoir Stop-Time, which chronicled his troubled childhood.
Ms. Chang, who will be the first woman and the first Asian- American to hold the directorship, called Mr. Conroy "an inspiration."
"As a former student of the workshop and a former visiting instructor there I've come to deeply care about the place and to believe in its mission, which is to support writers and writing," Ms. Chang says. "I'm thrilled to return to sustain and renew the wonderful program that's there."
Ms. Chang says she is also excited about returning to the Midwest, having grown...