Founded in 2001, the IIML offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses (including a PhD in creative writing) and has taught many leading New Zealand writers.

[1][2][3] Manhire's courses involved setting writing exercises to allow students to get to know each other's work and become comfortable giving and receiving feedback, followed by then developing more extensive formal portfolios.

[5] A review of the latter by David Hill commented: "If every other New Zealand writer stopped writing today, Bill Manhire's graduates could probably keep our publishers and readers ticking over".

[7] In 2001 American casino businessman Glenn Schaeffer (himself a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop) approached Manhire and offered to support the creation of an independent creative writing institute within the university.

He has said he prefers to call it "Victoria's creative writing programme", noting that the full title "is such a mouthful" that is "almost at odds with the fine use of language".

[1] Others who have taught courses at the IIML include Damien Wilkins, Chris Price, Bernadette Hall, Dinah Hawken, Ken Duncum,[1] Emily Perkins,[16] and Fiona Samuel.

[24][28][29] Past residents have included Joseph Musaphia (1979), Jack Lasenby (1993), Charlotte Randall (2001), Paula Boock (2009) and Victor Rodger (2017).

Howard regards "the emphasis on peer validation as more dangerous for the poet than the prose writer", and considers that the most successful IIML graduates are novelists as a result.