How Sexism and Machismo Shaped the Iowa Writers’ Workshop

In March 2016, the literary organization VIDA published a series of anonymous statements that accused the poet Thomas Sayers Ellis of predatory and abusive behavior. The collected accounts allege unwanted advances, mockery, physical violence, and threats to ruin women’s careers over several years. Fifty-two years old at the time and widely respected in the field, in January that year Ellis had been appointed a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Soon after VIDA published these voices, Ellis’s classes were canceled, and a university official confirmed they were “looking into the situation.”

https://newrepublic.com