In 2015, Buckley partnered with the prestigious non-fiction Iowa Writers’ Workshop at Iowa University, led by English teacher Mitch Kohn. “I asked John [D’Agata, head of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Non-Fiction Program and author of The Lifespan of a Fact, which was recently an off-Broadway play, and other critically acclaimed books] if he would come speak to Buckley kids," says Kohn. "He responded, ‘Why don’t you come here?’”
The first year was a huge success, and every March since then, during Buckley’s pupil-free days for prose writing, Kohn takes a group of about 20 Upper School students to cozy, snowy, collegiate Iowa City for two days of non-fiction writing workshops.
All Buckley Fellows are second-year graduate students in the Non-Fiction Writers’ Workshop, a three-year program. Of the 10 graduate students in Iowa’s Non-Fiction Writing program, four are selected to lead “Buckley Master Classes,” based on ideas they pitch to D’Agata. This year, they were led by second-year grad students Lulu Dewey Bryn Lovitt, Julia Lucus, and Darius Stewart. and covered the topics of comedy, true crime, sports and the anatomy, and poetic prose.