Frank Conroy, the fourth director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the oldest academic writing program in the country, will step down in December. A successor has not yet been announced.

Conroy, who was named director of the program in 1987, is the author of four books, including the memoir Stop-Time, which was published by Viking Press in 1967 and is considered a modern classic.

Although he underwent surgery for colon cancer last year, Conroy intends to teach fiction workshops in the MFA program for another five years.