Itto Outini


Disciplines: Literature – nonfiction
Disciplines: Literature – nonfiction
Based in Kansas City, MO
Residencies: 2024
Portrait by: Joanna Eldredge Morrissey

Itto Outini is an author, book coach, Fulbright Scholar, Steinbeck Fellow, and Edward F. Albee fellow. Her fiction and nonfiction can be read in The North American Review, Modern Literature, The Good River Review, Southland Alibi, The Stonecoast Review, The Lowestoft Chronicle, Hidden Peak, Jewish Life, Lotus-Eater, DarkWinter, Gargoyle, Sortes, and elsewhere, and she’s spoken for organizations including Cal Tech University, Verizon Wireless, The International Trade Centre, and The United Nations. She’s a co-founder of The DateKeepers, an author support platform, and a co-host of Let’s Have a Renaissance: The DateKeepers Podcast. She holds an M.A. in journalism and strategic media from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

At MacDowell, Outini finalized her memoir, which recounts her harrowing journey from rural Morocco, where she was blinded by a family member at the age of 17, to the U.S., where she earned her M.A. as a Fulbright scholar, founded a business, and fell in love. In addition to revising the manuscript, she developed a book proposal, conducted market research, and began developing a marketing plan.

Studios

Calderwood

Itto Outini worked in the Calderwood studio.

In the winter of 1998, motivated by his passion for reading, Stanford Calderwood donated funds for a new writers’ studio. Stanford Calderwood, a newspaperman in his youth who later went on to establish an investment firm, was a lover of nonfiction and was a member of MacDowell’s board of directors…

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