How Iowa Flattened Literature - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education:
"Did the CIA fund creative writing in America? The idea seems like the invention of a creative writer. Yet once upon a time (1967, to be exact), Paul Engle, director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, received money from the Farfield Foundation to support international writing at the University of Iowa. The Farfield Foundation was not really a foundation; it was a CIA front that supported cultural operations, mostly in Europe, through an organization called the Congress for Cultural Freedom."
This is not as unusual as it may sound. The CIA also funded abstract art after the war. All part of the cultural war with the Soviet Union. I regret never writing a screenplay about the abstract art story -- I had a great dark comedy outlined. Not sure why I never got to it. Always too much to do! Can't do everything, alas.
How to tell a story
