Lan Samantha Chang will take over running the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop in January. “Ms. Chang will teach a graduate fiction workshop, choose students for the fiction program (poetry students are chosen by the poetry faculty) and will consult on hiring, among other duties. The two-year program, which leads to a master’s in fine arts, has no specific academic course requirements. The fiction workshop, which became a full-fledged program in 1936, receives 750 applications for 25 places, and there are 450 poetry applications for 25 places.”