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IOWA CITY — At a pay phone 25 years ago in the exclusive picturesque Mount Athos in Greece — center of the Eastern Orthodox Church and home to 20-some monasteries and thousands of monks — a then-43-year-old Christopher Merrill took a moment from his spiritual journey and writing research to check in with his wife in Massachusetts.

“She said, ‘You got this strange message from Connie Brothers at the (Iowa) Writers' Workshop’,” Merrill said about the longtime program associate of the renowned University of Iowa workshop, which doles out among the most prestigious master of fine arts degrees in the world.

“My thought was maybe they're asking me to come and give a reading or teach for a semester

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