O'Connor in Letters

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O’Connor’s Plaque on the Iowa Avenue Literary Walk

Flannery O'Connor in Iowa City

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On Tuesday, Eavan Boland met with Writers' Workshop graduate students at the Dey House Frank Conroy Memorial Reading Room to answer their questions and discuss the process of writing. Listen to the discussion here:

Eavan Boland Q & A
Dey House Frank Conroy Memorial Reading Room, Oct. 13, 2009

The Writing University website hosted an online chat with Irish poet Eavan Boland at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14. Boland discussed poetry, writing in an international community, as well as other literary topics.

Read the archive of the Eavan Boland chat

International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill and IWP Program Assistant Kiki Petrosino sat down with Eavan Boland in the Shambaugh House on Thursday to ask her a few questions about her work. Listen to the entire interview here:

Eavan Boland Interview, Shambaugh House, Oct. 15, 2009: Listen

October 16, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | International Writing Program Email this article

Christopher Merrill and Marvin Bell Live Discussion

Thursday, Oct 15 at 1:00 p.m. CST

University of Iowa International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill and UI Professor Emeritus Marvin Bell, joined us for a live discussion today at 1 PM on Thurs., Oct 15th. Bell and Merrill discussed their new collection "7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book" and other literary topics.

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Corey, Madison, WI: Chris and Marvin,

I love the concept of group writing that is explored in your book '7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book'. I wanted to ask you is you consider what you did as a group a type of Exquisite Corpse (when a a few writers add lines to a poem without seeing what the others have written) or more of a conversation?

Marvin Bell: More of a conversation. Not serial, but many impulses coming in from seven directions at once. Kaleidoscopic. Crazier, too.

Chris Merrill: Thanks for your question, Corey. Although I wasn’t sure where this project might go, it quickly became a conversation in poetry, a forum in which seven poets writing in different languages found ways to speak to one another about matters of the heart.
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Lucas, Minneapolis, MN: Marvin, Chris,

Did you feel as you were writing poems for the "7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book" book that a momentum developed in which you were lead by the work in a different way than when you usually write alone?

By this I mean: did you begin to feel a different relationship between yourself and you work during the experience?

Marvin Bell: No, because I have done a good bit of collaboration with writers, dancers, musicians and composers. William Stafford and I wrote two books back-and-forth. The musician Marvin Tate and I did just did a back-and-forth collaboration for MAKE Magazine (Chicago). I am always willing to surrender to the materials. That's where the fun is, as well as the discoveries. Make sense?

Chris Merrill: Wonderful questions! Indeed the poems gathered momentum day by day, line by line, joke by joke, and I know that I found myself writing poems that seemed to come from the center of the table around which we had gathered. I wondered how my relationship to my work would change as a result of the experience, and all I can say about that is that it is too soon to say!
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Elizabeth, Iowa City, IA: I loved your reading last night, thank you! You mentioned at your reading for the book "7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book" that when you first started the project the 7 poets didn't necessarily know each other. How do you think that working in the creative process together helps bond people?

Marvin Bell: If one can surrender, or perhaps at least relax, "one's ego at the door," yes, I suppose the participants "bond" a bit. Though I've never been sure about people "bonding." Sounds as if there might be glue involved. Seriously, I like the idea that we are all in this together. Collaborations by artists can have that feel.

Chris Merrill: Thanks, Elizabeth. Indeed I was the only one to know all of the poets before we started, but I think it is safe to say that as the week wore on we all became rather close. It was as if we had entered a space in which freedom reigned, and there we could experiment with new ways of writing, new ways of configuring our relationship to the world. For four magical days we wandered together in the world of the marvelous, hoping to return with maps of where we had been.

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Heather, Iowa City: I very much enjoyed your collection of poetry written by Dean Young, Marvin Bell, and others in the same space.

I was wondering about the international aspects of it. Were there difficulties in translation?

Also, did you find that any political aspects came up out of the writing?

Marvin Bell: Chris can speak to the translations. I think overall there was more play, and maybe a little poetic reaching for the sublime, and also a feeling at times of love poetry--more of all that than of politics, but there was a little politics, too--especially, you may find, in some of my contributions.

Chris Merrill: The translations were made on the fly, and no doubt there were not only mistranslations but also some infelicities in the language—which became part of the process of writing. Indeed we seemed to mishear many lines, and those mishearing found their ways into some of the poems. Chance is an integral part of the creative process, and I sometimes think that we undertook was a grand experiment in chance. To be tugged in different directions by a colleague’s imagery or intonation or inflection was thrilling.

I found that politics entered my poems from the side, in the form of images drawn from my experience of covering the war in the Balkans—a subject that I have heretofore rarely addressed in poems, although I wrote a long nonfiction book about it. And I am happy that in the company of my friends I felt free enough to wander in that direction.
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James, Iowa City, IA: What are your favorite words?

What is your favorite shape?

Which do you enjoy more -- reading or composing?

Marvin Bell: I'm afraid I don't have favorite words, shapes or a preference for reading or composing. Well, composing is something different from reading, for me, and all-engrossing, but also perhaps more metabolic? But I do laugh a lot and sometimes it's words that are at hand, such as, say, Doo-wop. My wife, Dorothy, has invented the word boflippybrick. Not sure how to spell it, but one "goes boflippybrick."

Chris Merrill: Albany is a word that has always intrigued me. And this morning my eight-year-old daughter asked me what fisticuffs means: marvelous word! But, really, any word becomes magical, if you listen to it long enough, no?

Otherwise I like circles, and although I may think that I prefer to read, at least when I am avoiding sitting down to write, in fact I prefer to compose.

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John, Iowa City: I am an undergraduate at the University of Iowa, and I was wondering what is the best path to take to become a professional writer. How does one become a published poet, etc. It all seems like a mystery to me. Thank you!

Marvin Bell: Oh, it's actually simple. Read and write--a lot. Read good stuff. You can't learn to hit a baseball by watching someone strike out. Read something, then write something. Then read something else, and write something else. But here's the trick: show in your writing what you have read. Not by referring to it but by letting it affect how you write. That amalgam of influences will become your "writing voice." As for being "professional," you'll find that out as you go. You may even decide it's more fun to be an amateur. I can tell you this: wanting to be a writer is different from wanting to (having to) write. Does this help?

Chris Merrill: Read and write, write and read—and the rest will take care of itself. I’m quite serious about that. If you spend your best hours reading as widely as you can, in other languages, if possible, and trying to write in as many forms as you can think of, in poetry and prose, then page by page you will begin to make your way. The late John Gardner liked to say that if you write seriously for ten years you will become a successful writer. Now success means different things to different people. It might mean publication of a book or two, or fame and riches, or the simple validation of attempting to find order in a sequence or words—an activity that is addicting. Good luck.
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Karen, Rock Island, IL: I wanted to ask you about poetic form. Do you have a form that you prefer to write in? Do you use form to break periods of writers block or start poems? And how do you think the public responds to form (iambic pentameter, the sonnet, etc) these days?

Marvin Bell: William Stafford used to say, "Got a writer's block? Can't write? Lower your standards." Clever, cagey advice. Writing is largely getting into motion in the presence of language. It's not what one starts with, but the quality of attention one pays to it thereafter. Sure, one can use a known form, but it is best if one knows the form well from reading. There are some poetic forms that don't cause that much in English: the haiku, the pantoum... There are some that promote tediousness: the classroom sestina. But any form works if you pledge loyalty to it, find an identity for the line as you go, etc. Free verse isn't a form but a method for finding new forms. Again, one can only imitate what one has read. Hence, the good effect of reading a range of writers. Me, I have written mostly in forms of free verse, and lately have returned to a form I created, known as the "dead man poem." It comes in two titled sections, the poetic line is an elastic sentence, and there are some other unusual traits to it. The "dead man" is alive and dead at the same time. People send me their own "dead man" and "dead woman" poems. As for the public, who are they? Figuring out what the public likes--that's vaudeville. I can do it, but I only do it when asked to write an "occasional" poem. Does this windy reply help?

Chris Merrill: Good questions. I often write in meter, though I am not wedded to that, and indeed I like to write prose poems, too. What I hear in the first instance—a word that seems to ring in my ear, a phrase with a certain rhythm—may prompt me to seek other words or phrases in that register or key, and then I may follow them for as long as possible, wherever they may lead. I like to keep the process open in order to make my way into what I hope will be new terrain, a subject or theme or musical idea that intrigues me enough to keep writing.

As for public responses to form: a poet is interested first and foremost in his or her own response to the material at hand. If you hear something you like, chances are it will find a readership, however small that audience may be, and what matters most is that you listen hard for what seems central to your being, whether that arrives in traditional or open forms.

Marvin Bell: A PS for Karen: it is good for any writer of poetry to know meter and poetic forms. Besides, even a free verse writer needs sometimes to prove himself or herself to the metricians by speaking their language. I recall a teacher looking at a poem of mine on a worksheet and saying, with arched eyebrows, "This poem appears to be written in free verse." I replied, "Oh no, it's written in sprung accentuals with variant lines."
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Tim, North Libery, IA: Thank you for your time. Have you considered making the book '7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book' into a series, doing it again with different poets? And how did you choose the poets the first time for this book?

Marvin Bell: Chris knows best. I'm always willing.

Chris Merrill: I would not want to repeat the experiment—and this book really was an experiment. But I love to collaborate with other creative people, and I’m thinking of different ways to continue this adventure in the language. The French Surrealists conducted many such experiments during the most vital period of the movement’s history, games of chance and sessions of automatic writing and nights devoted to the exploration of dreams, and I like to think that another journey is awaiting the right group of poets. Indeed Marvin and I have just been discussing ways to continue the conversation. Which is to say: we’re open to suggestions.

How did I choose the poets? I asked Marvin first, because we have been friends for more than twenty-five years, because I admire to no end the book or poems he wrote with the late William Stafford, Seques, and because I had a feeling that he would love the project. Then I asked Tomaz Salamun, whose poems I had translated for many years, because I hoped that he would return to the University of Iowa to give a reading as part of the International Writing Program’s (IWP) fortieth anniversary celebration. Then I asked Dean Young, who was teaching in the Writers’ Workshop, because I love his poems. And finally I asked the poets from the IWP, Istvan Laszlo Geher and Ksenia Golubovich and Simone Inguanez, after I had come to know them well enough to imagine that they would like to take part in this project. In retrospect, things could have turned out quite badly if I had chosen less open-minded poets. But from the start there was a good feeling in the air, and so we began.
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Emily, Iowa City, IA: We've all heard of 'lost in translation'. Do you think anything is 'gained' in translation?

Marvin Bell: Ah yes, translators like to argue about what makes for the best translation. What is retained in a good translation? --The spirit, the feel, the voice, most of the content, varying amounts of the culture of the original, and the very idea of, say, poetry... Some "translation" can only be a transliteration; the languages are too different. Ah, the impure world. Poets just get on with it. Biographers, critics and theorists are sometimes befuddled by the impurity. Translation is not cloning, it's true.

Chris Merrill: Much is gained in translation: poetic logics that are not part of a national literary discourse, patterns of images that may lead readers and writers into new fields of inquiry, visions of the world that broaden one’s sympathies. Yes, the music may be lost in translation. But since the alternative is silence I am all for translators finding a music that will suffice.
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Jon, Des Moines: I write poetry as a sort of meditation, but also as escape, and sometimes, rarely, as communication with others. James Joyce spoke of the difference between making art for yourself and making art for an outside audience. What do you think of these two different aspects, the audience of self and the audience of the public? Do you think of others as you write, and who do you write for?

Marvin Bell: I think one writes up to one's own limits--linguistic, psychological, intellectual and perhaps emotional--and lets the chips fall where they may. Frost said it: "No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader." However, I have written "occasional" poems when asked, and that's a different matter, as you might assume. Make sense?

Chris Merrill: I think of a poem as a dialogue with the language—which is to say: a dialogue with the self. In the case of 7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book that dialogue was refracted through six other voices, other selves. What fun we had!
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October 15, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Poetry | Faculty | International Writing Program Email this article

Eavan Boland Live Discussion

Wednesday, Oct 14 at 10:00 a.m. CST

The Writing University website hosted an online chat with Irish poet Eavan Boland at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14. Boland discussed poetry, writing in an international community, as well as other literary topics.

Boland, who attended the International Writing Program residency in 1979, has published nine volumes of poetry, as well as two volumes of prose. Her awards include the Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award. She is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and the advisory board of the International Writers Center at Washington University. She is professor of English at Stanford University and director of the creative writing program.

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Scott Doll, Iowa City: Eavan Boland,

You have said that the prescriptions of Romanticism and Separatism have governed female poets in a phallocentric society. Has this changed over time in favor of women writers at all? Also, has an increasing role of feminism had any beneficial effects?

Eavan Boland: Dear Scott -

Thanks for your question.

A "phallocentric" society is not a term I would use, nor associate myself with. It's a term that doesn't seem precise or useful. (The term has been used in some essays by other writers that I've quoted.)

But in the essay "The Woman poet Her Dilemma" I did raise the issues of Romanticism and separatism. How they seemed oppositional and might well be wrenching opposites for women poets.

I think some things have changed. Do I believe feminism has had beneficial effects? Absolutely. But as an ethic and not as an aesthetic, and I've said that about myself elsewhere. I'm feminist. I'm not a feminist poet. I think poetry begins where certainties end. Even the finest ethics and collective historical movements or aspirations can't come to the space between the page and the pen and the poet's mind.

But I do believe that feminism has played a great and powerful role in recovering texts, in challenging the silences and lacks of permission surrounding women poets - whether their absence from anthologies or curricula or their missing presence on a canonical record. It's also effective in that it challenges the idea that issues raised by women poets -of craft and tone and self -are issues only for women. It commends the idea that these are issues for all of poetry, and that they benefit all poets and readers regardless of gender.

best wishes
Eavan Boland
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Patrick, Iowa City: Dear Prof. Boland,

Could you talk a little bit about the difference between "memory" and "history," and how these operate in your poems? Many of your poems make reference to historical events, such as the 1847 Irish famine and the Northern Troubles. At the same time, personal memory (of marriage, motherhood, and travel) is the doorway through which you enter into your meditations of these larger events. Does personal memory serve history, or betray it? Are the two phenomena completely separate for you?

Eavan Boland: Hi Patrick -

Thanks for the question.

I probably have never quite resolved these issues in my mind. Let me take the question you ask. "Does personal memory serve history, or betray it?". Look for instance at Yeats's "Easter 1916" poem. Yeats opens there with a personal memory of the combatants in the Irish Rising ("I have met them at close of day/Coming with vivid faces"). And he then enters the event as he sees it.

Yeats salts that whole history in the poem with personal memory until you're not sure which is which. Does his personal memory betray the history of the Rising? No, but it shapes it. After you read the poem, the history has become plastic again, not fixed. Yeats doesn't just affect history in this poem. He makes it. The same would be true of Whitman, for instance. Their fusions of memory, feeling and history are thoroughly dynamic.

So to go back to your question -I am not sure whether personal memory serves history. But them I'm not at all sure that history deserves to be "served". And if there is a betrayal it seems to me history is the treasonous part of the equasion, not the other way around. History overwrites, makes anonymous, depersonalizes at a great rate. Personal memory retrieves what it discards.

Hope this helps -

best
Eavan Boland
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Neill, Iowa City: Eavan, I'm a fiction writer and plan to apply for a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. Do you have any advice for me? Or any thoughts about the program in general? Thanks!

Eavan Boland: Neill -

We are always delighted to have talented young writers apply. (The email of our administrator is mpopek@stanford.edu. But you probably know that from the website.) It really is a strong and vivid community of young writers. And we're always thrilled that young writers turn to it.

I should add however that it's extremely competitive. I think's that's been on the increase. We have wonderful teachers in the program and they are real mentors to the Stegners.

Last year we had above 1600 applications for 5 places in fiction and 5 in poetry. But I don't add these statistics to be disheartening. 5 poets were chosen, and 5 fiction writers. And young, gifted writers are always defying the statistics anyway.

So the best of luck with the application and, of course, with your future work.

Eavan Boland
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Jess, Chicago, IL: Do you find yourself using and re-using themes and/or words in your work? For example, in my own work, I am always coming back to a 'field' when I write. 'Field,' the word and all the different ways of describing a field, is always present. Do you think this sort of tendency should be fought or avoided as a writer? If not, what is the best to follow this tendency and still keep your work and your writing 'new'? Thank you!

Eavan Boland: Hi Jess -

Thanks for the question -

Certainly, I've often used the same words again and again. Or phrases. The problem is that the word begins to acquire a certain symbolic meaning for you and yet may not have that for a reader. So the reader can see that you're using a word that has great meaning for you. And not for them.

I would certainly set yourself a task of avoiding the word - or even the concept for a month -and see what happens. Otherwise you're falling back on something which may be a bit like poetic comfort food!

best
Eavan Boland
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Zlatko Anguelov, Iowa City, IA: In the Internet and, especially, the social media era, poetry looks like an art of the past. It is an elevating, elite art, which has very little in common with the simplicity of mind revealed by the free access of non-educated people to the public space. For whom do you write your poems in this unpoetic context?

Eavan Boland: Hi Zlatko,

Thanks so much for the question.

I'm not sure I agree with its premises however. First of all I'm uncomfortable with the idea of "the free access of non-educated people to the public space".

In a country like Ireland we have a very strong question mark over the term "non-educated". Education is such a rich, variable and profound concept. People acquire it in so many different ways. And into the whole art of poetry -for hundreds and hundreds of years -the most democratized and nurturing encounters have taken place between people and poetry. Human experience has educated poetic form here. And poetic form has shaped human experience. I'm speaking about the ballad, the ghazal, the narrative etc. That is the education which is consequential in poetry. Formal education is not an issue. William Yeats never went to University.

William Blake probably had little formal instruction in that sense - though he worked as an artist and scrivener. Charlotte Mew didn't go to College. Virginia Woolf said she had six guineas spent on her educatiohn. Yet they are the source of education for thousands of readers on thousands of college courses all over the world. That should guide us in thinking about education.

So I don't see the relationship between poetry and the virtual public space in the way you do. Not at all. It's not oppositional. And it's not new. The internet doesn't replace the meeting hall, the room at midnight where someone reads a poem they love alone, or the poetry reading in a crowded hall. What is wonderful about the internet is that it knows how to be all these spaces at once. It adds to them. It doesn't subtract. The reader is not changed there. They are simply set free into new opportunities. But the art is the same. The encounter is the same.

As for an audience, nothing has changed. I write for myself and hope that a reader will find that poem and be able to include it in their experience. The reader of poetry -as far as I'm concerned -is involved in an essential action. It follows logically for me that there cannot be anything non-educated or elite in that -on either side of your equasion. The poem and the reader always make up a human, democratic and profoundly educated unit. And always will. In any space -virtual or actual -

Best wishes
Eavan
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Ben, Iowa City, IA: Can you discuss the way that you weave narrative into your poems, while still maintaining the lyrical aspects?

Eavan Boland: Hi Ben

Thanks for the question -& it's an interesting one.

I don't think narrative and lyric are oppositional elements of the poem. But there can be conflicts of interest between them. For instance you might have something in a poem that wants to work towards revelation (to use a simplistic tag) and if you narrate it you simply keep the reader in a logical posture. And the lyric mode would be best there.

Similarly a lyric mode can suppress a narrative just when you need to engage the reader and draw them in. Poems that are too cryptic, where you have to guess at what the narrative really is, just keep tripping you up.

I think the best advice is to think of yourself as a reader when you look at your own subject matter. Do you want it to go to a lyric mode, or do you want to know what happened.

A very interesting poet in this regard is Brigit Pegeen Kelly. She has a wonderful book called "Song" and the poem at the back called "Three Cows and the Moon" is a perfect balance of lyric and narrative. They work with and for each other in that poem -

Best
Eavan Boland
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Jennifer, Iowa City, IA: Looking back, do you think the anti Irish resentment you experienced fueled you to dispel myths and become a poet? Did you use writing as a release while you felt resentment or did you start afterward?

Eavan Boland: Dear Jennifer, thanks for the question. I started thinking about it and writing about it well after that. I left England when I was twelve, so I had no clear consciousness of anti-Irishness then. It had certainly existed in London when I was a child at school btu ti's only when you grow older that you being to remember it and articulate it clearly.

But your question is certainly right. Later that feeling of displacement I had in London --and the anti Irishness there added to that- became a real influence on me.

Best wishes,
Eavan Boland
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Sallie, Rock Island, IL: Hi Professor Boland, I had a few questions about your poem "The Pomegranate" that I was hoping I could get answered.

I noticed in your poem that you make the strong connection of mother and daughter, and I was wondering if this had anything to do with the connection between England and Ireland?

I also saw that you do not mention a father to the daughter you're writing about, does this play into the myth that women didn't have a strong voice? Or that men create problems, and it's up to women, or possibly mothers, to fix them?

Knowing that your father was a diplomat, did that have any significance in this poem?

Eavan Boland: Thanks for your question. I'll start at the end of it first: the poem is closely built around the Ceres & Persephone myth. In that, a young girl is kidnapped and brought to the underworld. Her mother comes to bargain her back. She negotiates with the king of the underworld.She gets her back for six months and the girl stays for six months.

So it's a myth of the starting of the seasons. The time the mother gets her back becomes spring and summer. The time she stays there becomes Fall and Winter.

I hewed pretty closely to this. There's no father in that myth. There's no father in the poem. The archtype of the legend is mother & daughter only.

I wouldn't have thought of it as England and Ireland. But I entirely see why you ask the question. In the myth the underworld ruler represents all the negatives of power. The mother signs off for the light and steadfastness of love and womanhood.

Best wishes & thanks for the question! Eavan Boland

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October 14, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Alumni | Poetry | International Writing Program Email this article

Live Discussions on the Writing University website

The Writing University website hosted two live online discussions this week. Our first discussion, with Ida Beam distinguished Visiting Professor Eavan Boland, took place at 10 AM on Wed., Oct 14th. Boland discussed the process of writing, literature in an international community, as well as other literary topics.

Read the archive of the Eavan Boland chat

The second live discussion, with the University of Iowa International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill and UI Professor Emeritus Marvin Bell, took place at 1 PM on Thurs., Oct 15th. Bell and Merrill discussed their new collection "7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book" and other literary topics.

Read the archive of the Marvin Bell and Christopher Merrill chat

Eavan Boland, this year’s Ida Beam distinguished Visiting Professor, is universally acknowledged as the preeminent female poet and contemporary writer of her native Ireland. She has published nine volumes of poetry, including Domestic Violence (2007) and New Collected Poems (2008), both with W.W. Norton. Her awards include the Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award. She is on the board of the Irish Arts Council, a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and on the advisory board of the International Writers Center at Washington University. She lives in Stanford, California, where she is professor of English at Stanford University and director of the creative writing program.

October 08, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Poetry | Faculty | International Writing Program Email this article

Announcing The Iowa Review Design Contest

The Iowa Review will enter its 40th year of publication in 2010. To mark this milestone, the Iowa Review is holding a competition to redesign their cover. The new look will be implemented beginning with the April 2010 issue. The new magazine will have dimensions of 8 inches tall by 6.5 inches wide, with 4-inch French flaps and a spine of approximately one-half inch. Entrants are asked to create a design that will accommodate a changing central image and thematic emphasis. Submissions should be made via email as PDF attachments of no larger than 2 MB. Entries must include:

• Front and back covers, spine, and French flaps with the aforementioned measurements.
• The name “The Iowa Review,” either accompanying an image-based logo or as a logotype of its own.
• Space for a bar code.
• Cover price.
• Volume and issue numbers.
• Date of issue.
• Some indication of what is inside the current issue (e.g., authors, subjects, etc.)

Full Guidelines (PDF)

If you live in or near Iowa City, Prairie Lights Bookstore offers a wide selection of major literary magazines for browsing, including The Iowa Review.

The winning entry will receive $1,000, as well as acknowledgment in every issue in which the designer’s work is used. The new print design will be coordinated with the redesign of The Iowa Review’s website, which also will launch in April 2010.

To enter, please submit your PDF to iowa-review@uiowa.edu with “Design Contest” in the subject line. Questions may also be sent to this address. All entries must be received by October 19, 2009. The winner will be announced November 1.

Full Guidelines (PDF)

October 05, 2009
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New UI Press Anthology Traces Influence of Wallace Stevens

"Visiting Wallace: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Wallace Stevens," edited by Dennis Barone and James Finnegan, with a foreword by Alan Filreis, is the first anthology of poems, by a full range of poets, inspired by Stevens's life and work. The newly released work is available this autumn from the University of Iowa Press.

Contributors include John Ashbery, John Berryman, Robert Bly, Robert Creeley, Annie Finch, Forrest Gander, Dana Gioia, Peter Gizzi, Edward Hirsch, Richard Howard, Susan Howe, Donald Justice, Ann Lauterbach, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Marianne Moore, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, David St. John, Carl Sandburg, Ravi Shankar, Mark Strand, William Carlos Williams and Charles Wright.

Barone, who teaches at St. Joseph College, is the author or editor of numerous books. Finnegan is an executive with Lee & Mason Financial Services in Connecticut. Filreis is the Kelly Professor of English and director of the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania.

September 30, 2009
Poetry | Faculty | UI Press Email this article

UI Center for the Book Professor Awarded 2009 MacArthur Genius Grant

Former director of the University of Iowa Center for the Book and UI adjunct professor Tim Barrett has been named a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, one of 24 recipients in the annual award. The founding director of the papermaking facilities at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, Barrett, 59, said the grant means more research into how paper was made centuries ago, further unlocking the secrets of the process. "It's hard to get research funds because I'm not in a traditional field," he said. Besides that, he said, the grant will help him pay tribute to those craftsmen who, for a variety of reasons, never wrote down how they made paper. "I'm really eager to see that they not be forgotten," he said. The award gives Barrett $500,000 over 5 years and frees him to pursue his craft and research agenda. The Center for the Book is extraordinarily proud of Barrett and congratulate him on this much deserved recognition.

Two former Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty members Heather McHugh and Debbie Eisenberg have also received MacArthur Genius grants this year. Heather McHugh composes rich verse that embraces such wordplay as puns, rhymes, and syntactical, exploring the human condition. From 1999 to 2006, she was Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Debbie Eisenberg crafts distinctive portraits of American life in tales of striking precision and moral depth. Her additional works include Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), and All Around Atlantis (1997). Read more..

More information about the award, visit the MacArthur Foundation website. For the The New York Times article on the awards, click here.

September 23, 2009
Faculty | UI Center for the Book Email this article

Kurt Vonnegut reading: Video

September 22, 2009
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Book Reviews: Glück, Kidder, Westlake

Recently The New York Times Sunday Book Review has featured reviews of work by several authors affiliated with the University of Iowa, including Tracy Kidder, Louise Glück and Donald E. Westlake.

Read the articles here:
Against the Odds >>
Tracy Kidder's "Strength in What Remains"

Nothing Remains of Love >>
Louise Glück's "A Village Life"

Dortmunder’s Farewell >>
Donald E. Westlake's "Get Real"

September 17, 2009
Alumni | Fiction | Poetry Email this article

Tomaž Šalamun Wins Prestigious ‘Struga Poetry Evenings’ Award

Slovenian poet and International Writing Program alum Tomaž Šalamun received the 2009 award for best poetic achievement at this year's Struga Poetry Evenings festival. Since 1962, the Struga Poetry Evenings have been held in honor of the Miladinov brothers in Struga, Macedonia. It is one of the oldest, largest, and most renowned poetry festivals in the world. The 48th Struga Poetry Evenings (SPE) opened August 20th, in Struga with a ceremony that included a traditional recital of the poem T'ga za jug (Longing for The South), a concert by pianist Simon Trpceski and the international poetry recital named "Poetry Meridians". Salamun planted a tree in the Park of Poetry and held a press conference.

Šalamun's poetry was described by festival director Danilo Kocevski as "a kind of rebellion against cliches, search for new space of the poetry language and expression. Close to everyday life, linguistically open, communicative and simple, but also complex, metaphysically deep, revealing strong deep, unexpected vaults of human existence."

Tomaž Šalamun was born in Zagreb, Croatia, raised in Koper, Slovenia, and now makes his home in Ljubljana. He has published 25 volumes of poems in Slovenia and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. The Selected Poems Of Tomaž Šalamun, edited and in large part translated by Charles Simic, was the poet's debut collection in English, brought out in 1988 as part of Ecco Press's prestigious Modern European Poetry series. It was followed by The Shepherd, The Hunter (Pedernal, 1992), The Four Questions Of Melancholy (White Pine Press, 1997), Feast (Harcourt, 2000), and The Book for My Brother (Harvest Books, 2006). He was a participant in the University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 1987.

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September 10, 2009
Poetry | International Writing Program Email this article

Winners of the 2009 Iowa Short-Fiction Awards

Winners of the 2009 Iowa short-fiction awards -- "How to Leave Hialeah" by Jennine Capó Crucet and "All That Work and Still No Boys" by Kathryn Ma -- have become available from the University of Iowa Press.

Ma's book won the Iowa Short Fiction Award, which has been presented annually since 1969. Her ten stories probe the immigrant experience, most particularly among northern California's Chinese Americans, illuminating the confounding nature of duty, transformation and loss.

Curtis Sittenfeld, author of "American Wife" and "Prep," wrote, "With subtle intelligence and wry humor, Kathryn Ma brings us characters whose lives are complicated -- in all the best ways -- by family, race, immigration and quirks of personality. These wonderful stories have the resonance of truth even as they make you see the world in new ways."

"How to Leave Hialeah" won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award, which was founded in 1998 in honor of the first director of the UI Press. Crucet's stories focus on the Cuban-American community of Miami, shaped by the people and landscapes of South Florida and by the stories of Cuba told by her family.

Charles Baxter wrote, "What a joy it is to read the work of a writer who has a powerful voice, a sense of humor, and a feeling for local histories. Jennine Capó Crucet's stories start with Cuban American neighborhoods and cultures and then sail off into the direction of the great themes: love, familial bonds, aging, and death. And resurrection. This is a wonderful collection."

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September 03, 2009
Fiction | UI Press Email this article

Workshop Alum and NWP Candidate Highlighted in Anthology

Laurel Snyder, a Writers' Workshop alum, and Michael Allen Potter, a graduate student in the Nonfiction Writing Program, are both featured in the new anthology, "Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith," published by Beacon Press. This engaging collection of ambivalent confessions, skeptical testimonies, and personal revelations presents true tales of the stranger dilemmas of faith and doubt and religion lost and found.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Michener-Engle Fellow, Laurel Snyder is the author of two novels for children, “Any Which Wall” and “Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains OR The Search for a Suitable Princess” (Random House) and two picture books, “Inside the Slidy Diner” and “Baxter the Kosher Pig.” (Tricycle). In addition to her books for children, Laurel has written two books of poems, “Daphne & Jim: a choose-your-own-adventure biography in verse” (Burnside Review Press, 2005) and “The Myth of the Simple Machines” (No Tell Books, 2007). She also edited an anthology of nonfiction, “Half/Life: Jew-ish tales from Interfaith Homes” (Soft Skull Press, 2006).

Michael Allen Potter holds degrees in English and Theatre Arts and is currently a graduate student in the Nonfiction Writing Program where he is completing a memoir about adoption, identity, and the search for his family.

August 27, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Nonfiction Writing Program Email this article

Meet the IWP: Ge Fei

As one of several University of Iowa home page features, 'Meet the IWP' provides a very brief introduction to the writers from around the globe who will be in residence this fall through the International Writing Program (IWP). In this edition, the UI interviews Ge Fei.

"China has played an important role in the history of the International Writing Program, ever since the program’s founding in 1967. Ge Fei (the pen name for Liu Yong), a professor of literature and film theory at Qinghua University, is considered one of China’s leading experimental writers. He became a central figure in the avant-garde/experimental literature of the 1980s after the publication of his second story “Lost Boat” (Michuan), using a meta-fictional style influenced by Borges. His next story, “A Flock of Birds” (Hese niaoqun), is generally acknowledged to be one of the most intricate, psychoanalytical, and esoteric stories of the late 1980s." Read more...

August 24, 2009
Fiction | International Writing Program Email this article

Meet the IWP: Alice Pung

As one of several University of Iowa home page features, 'Meet the IWP' provides a very brief introduction to the writers from around the globe who will be in residence this fall through the International Writing Program (IWP). In this edition, the UI interviews Alice Pung.

"Lawyer Alice Pung, whose work as a fiction writer, playwright, and nonfiction writer is bringing her to the 2009 International Writing Program, was born in Melbourne, Australia, to Cambodian parents. She has published the memoir Unpolished Gem (2006) and she edited the anthology Growing Up Asian in Australia (2008). Unpolished Gem won the Australian Book Industry Association award for Newcomer of the Year, was selected for the Books Alive Great Reads Guide, and was short-listed for numerous other awards.

A Syndey Herald review of Unpolished Gem explains, 'Alice Pung, known to her Chinese-Cambodian family as Agheare, is a child of refugees who, having grown up in Australia, can offer a rare bicultural vantage point on Australian multiculturalism.'" Read more...

August 13, 2009
International Writing Program Email this article

Highlighted ISWF Staff: Amy Margolis and Caryl Pagel

In this segment of the University of Iowa's series 'Be Remarkable', Amy Margolis, director of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, talks about the process of organizing and steering the two-month writing festival. She explains the inspiration that comes from bringing together writers "from every walk of life, every background" with the common purpose of writing. "As much energy as it takes, I get so much energy back from the Festival that I write more when we’re in session than in any time of year.” Read the full article here: Be Remarkable

Amy Margolis received her M.F.A. from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow in fiction. She has taught writing both as part of the Festival and to undergraduates at The University of Iowa. Amy is from Kansas City, where everything matches.
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Each month, THERMOS magazine conducts an interview with a past contributor from their publication. For July, the editors interviewed Caryl Pagel, a recent Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate and coordinator for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Pagel answers questions about craft, her influences and her recent work. She also provides readers with insight on her current poetic inspirations:

"Thermos: What were some of the first poems/poets you loved? How do they seem to you now? How do they relate to your own work?

Caryl Pagel: Some of the first poets I loved: Mike Ness, Ian MacKaye, Tim Armstrong, Glenn Danzig, Iggy Pop. The first formal poem I ever wrote was a pantoum about Ian MacKaye. The list still seems relevant, but lacking in girls. Perhaps that explains my current (on-the-page) favorites: Dickinson, Niedecker, Moore, Guest, Christensen—and also, my love for the dynamic music and emotion in Berryman and Hopkins." Read more...

August 10, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Alumni | Summer Writing Festival Email this article

POROI Releases Summer Journal, Volume 6.1

In this special issue of the Poroi Journal, a publication sponsored by the Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry and published electronically by the University of Iowa Libraries, contributors explore the relationship between rhetoric and public culture. A collection of critical and creative essays aims to move readers to reflect on the meaning of key issues in American cultural life: privilege and power, race and gender, life and death. In doing so, authors engage in the politics and poetics of writing public culture.

As an electronic journal, Poroi is more flexible than paper journals about its lengths, forms, and publication schedules. It appears several times a year, as submissions warrant, and it publishes single articles as well as special symposia or issues catalyzed by guest editors. Scholarly articles in Poroi emphasize rhetorical analysis and invention in all fields of learning, and they address interdisciplinary audiences.

Read the new issue here >> Poroi Journal, Volume 6.1

August 03, 2009
POROI | UI Libraries Email this article

ECA DVC with Sarajevo and Casablanca

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International Writing Program website

July 29, 2009
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UI Unveils 30 Years of Interviews with International Writers

The storied history of the University of Iowa's International Writing Program is now available for the world to hear. "The Peter Nazareth Collection," which consists of 30 years of audio interviews with IWP participants and guests, is digitally archived at the University of Iowa Libraries.

Since 1967, more than 1,000 creative writers from 120 countries have visited the university to attend the IWP. In his interviews with writers connected to the program, Peter Nazareth, a UI faculty member and an adviser to the International Writing Program since 1974.

"This collection is a gold mine that's now going out to the whole world from absolutely the right place at absolutely the right time, because this is a city of writing right now," said Nazareth, referring to Iowa City's designation on Nov. 20, 2008, as a UNESCO City of Literature. Nazareth, professor of English in the UI's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, recorded 66 interviews, seminars and panel discussions conducted in various settings, including "Humanities at Iowa," a 1980s radio show that aired on WSUI/KSUI. Read more...

July 27, 2009
English Department | Faculty | International Writing Program Email this article

Valentino to succeed Hamilton as editor of ‘The Iowa Review’

Russell Scott Valentino, a professor in the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will succeed David Hamilton as editor of The Iowa Review when Hamilton steps down at the end of the summer.

Hamilton, who has served as the review's editor for 32 years, will continue teaching as a regular faculty member in the college's Department of English. A reception in his honor is planned for the fall.

"To my mind, The Iowa Review is considered one of the finest literary magazines in the country because of David's tireless work in seeking out new talent, keeping in touch with old friends and contributors, and maintaining an atmosphere of quiet professionalism," Valentino said. "That he did this for 32 years is a remarkable and humbling accomplishment. I hope to continue in the same spirit."

Valentino will take over just in time for the magazine's 40th anniversary, which will be marked by three gala issues in 2010, a redesign of the magazine and the launch of a new online portal. Read more...

July 20, 2009
Faculty | Iowa Review Email this article

UI Libraries Host the ‘Iowa City Book Festival’ July 18

A new festival in Iowa City this summer will celebrate the city’s literary connections: the inaugural Iowa City Book Festival will be held Saturday, July 18, in Gibson Square outside the University of Iowa's Main Library’s south entrance.

Presented by the University of Iowa Libraries and the University of Iowa Press, the festival will feature a mix of local and regional booksellers with new and used books for sale, a music stage, children’s activities, food vendors, book arts demonstrations, readings and panel discussions.

The Shambaugh Author Series will bring a mix of local, regional and national authors from a variety of genres to the festival. Additionally, 'how to' discussions and workshops will give festival-goers opportunities to interact in a small group setting with other readers, writers and local literary experts on a wide range of topics.

Discussions will focus on a variety of topics including finding a book discussion group, getting involved with adult literacy programs in Iowa City and writing a literary blog. The workshops will provide hands-on opportunities to use library resources to find consumer health information, add historical context to genealogical research or read reviews of the latest best-sellers.

The Iowa City Book Festival will depend on the efforts of volunteers to be a success. You can sign up or view possible duties for Book Festival volunteers at the volunteer website.

Visit the Iowa City Book Festival website for more information.

July 15, 2009
Fiction | Poetry | Nonfiction | UI Libraries | UI Press | UNESCO Email this article

Community of the Imagination: IWP Video

Internet Explorer users: click video twice to play

An archive file of the film Community of the Imagination, produced by Gerald Krell in 1973, is now available online. The hour-long documentary was commissioned by the United States Information Agency, one of the early funders of the IWP. Its producer and director Gerald Krell and his crew came to Iowa City in winter of 1973, shot for about a week, then completed the production at the USIA facilities in Washington DC. The film was then shipped to US Embassies world-wide and shown locally, at screenings or via broadcast media. After years in the vaults it has surfaced. The video provides a rich trove of IWP history and an ingenious perspective on the writers.

The writers in the 1973 residency:
AMADI, Elechi - Nigeria AMPATZOGLOU, Petros - Greece ASHOKAMITRAN, J. Thyagarajan - India BLANDIANA, Ana - Romania BRAUN, Andrzej - Poland BRAVO, José Antonio - Perú CHEUNG, Dominic - Hong Kong CHOE, In-hoon - South Korea COSTA, Flavio Moreira - Brazil DOMINGUEZ, Luis - Chile GERGELY, Ágnes - Hungary GUBEGNA, Abbie - Ethiopia HADI, Abdul - Indonesia HOWELL, Anthony - United Kingdom KARPOWICZ, Tymoteusz - Poland LAPINSKI, Zdzislaw - Poland MORENO, Virginia R. - Philippines NAZARETH, Peter - Uganda POPESCU, Petru - Romania RAWSON, Alicia Dellapiane - Argentina RUSAN, Romulus - Romania SHIRAISHI, Kazuko - Japan VANEGAS, Teodoro - Ecuador VENTURA, Adao – Brazil YU, Tien-t'sung – Taiwan
Hualing NIEH ENGLE Paul ENGLE

International Writing Program website

July 02, 2009
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T.C. Boyle Interviewed in Wag’s Review

Photo by Milo Boyle, Santa Barbara CA, 2003

In the latest issue of the online magazine Wag's Revue, the editor talks with author T.C. Boyle, recent inductee into the Arts Academy and Iowa Writers' Workshop alum, about his writing influences, his relationship with Raymond Carver and his sartorial flair. Boyle discusses the process behind his work and connections between his writing and music:

"I was a student at Iowa when I wrote 'Stones in my Passway, Hellhound on my Trail.' The entirety of the research consisted of listening to the [Robert Johnson] album twelve million times, reading the liner notes twice, and deciding—seeing, knowing—the true version of Robert Johnson’s death. For period detail I went down to Gabe & Walker’s [now The Picador in Iowa City] where my friend Blue Phil Ajioka was taking a break between sets and asked, 'Phil, what kind of guitar did Robert Johnson play?' Phil said, in his bluesman’s basso, 'That’d be a Harmony Sovereign.' Story over."

Read the full interview here: Wag's Revue

T. C. Boyle is the author of 20 books of fiction. Among numerous honors, he has received the PEN/Faulkner award for his novel World's End and six O. Henry Awards for short fiction. He corresponded with Wag's Revue fiction editor Will Litton via email.

June 30, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Alumni | Fiction Email this article

Marilynne Robinson Wins Orange Prize

University of Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty member Marilynne Robinson has been awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction for her third novel, "Home," which acts as the companion to her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "Gilead." Robinson surpassed five other fiction writers from around the world for the Orange honor, drawing all of the judges to a unanimous decision. Fi Glover, chair of judges, described "Home" as a "kind, wise, enriching novel" that was "exquisitely crafted." Glover added, "We were unanimously agreed -- it is a profound work of art." Read more...

In addition to this, a new episode of "Conversations from the Iowa Writers' Workshop" featuring Marilynne Robinson will air this summer on the Big 10 Network. You can watch the full interview with Robinson on the Center for Media website, which houses an archive of all previous UI programs.

June 25, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Fiction | Faculty Email this article

New Flannery O’Connor Graduate Fellowships Provide Aid for Writers’ Workshop Students

Flannery O'Connor in Iowa, 1946

After Flannery O'Connor graduated in 1947 from the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, she became a major force in American literature. A new fellowship fund in the late writer's name will now help the Workshop aid other writers with similar potential.

The Flannery O'Connor Graduate Fellowship Fund was initiated by a gift commitment to the UI Foundation from the Ralph Schultz Family Foundation of Waterloo, Iowa. The endowed fund will increase the level of assistance available to Writers' Workshop students and affirm the program's commitment to developing promising writers regardless of financial means.

"As the model for creative-writing programs worldwide, the Iowa Writers' Workshop has long been the destination of choice for talented writers who wish to hone their craft," Workshop director Lan Samantha Chang said. "To preserve that distinction, we must provide the kind of financial support that will make it possible for the very best writers in the country to keep coming to Iowa." Read more...

June 18, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Alumni Email this article

Iowa Public Radio Donates ‘Live from Prairie Lights’ Recordings to UI Libraries

Iowa Public Radio has donated all of the original recordings of "Live from Prairie Lights" to the UI Libraries. Eighteen years and 1,800 programs were captured on CD, mini disc and reel-to-reel. Stewardship of these materials is part of the libraries' ongoing commitment to record and make accessible the intellectual output of the university.

"These recordings document an outstanding series of readings," said Greg Prickman, assistant head of Special Collections at the UI Libraries. "We are grateful to Iowa Public Radio for ensuring their long-term preservation by making this donation."

"We are proud to partner with the University Libraries on this project," said Joan Kjaer, Iowa Public Radio director of communications. "This partnership provides an exceptional opportunity for all kinds of people - scholars, writers, readers, fans of the show - to have permanent access to conversations with the world's best authors."

Currently 250 of these recordings, including the first reading with Mary Swander and Jane Anne Straw, are available online in the Iowa Digital Library (http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/vwu). Eventually, the entire series will be digitized and freely available via the Iowa Digital Library. Read more...

June 16, 2009
"Live from Prairie Lights" Audio Archive | UI Libraries Email this article

Robin Hemley Live Discussion

Thurs, June 11 at 1:00 p.m. CST

Robin Hemley was online Thurs, June 11 at 1:00 p.m. to take readers questions and comments about literature and writing. This is an archive of that discussion. Hemley is a faculty member of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

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Moderator: Welcome to the first session of our new Writing University 'Live Discussions' series. Today we have Robin Hemley, professor at the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Program, online to answer your questions about a variety of literary topics, including his new book 'Do Over! and his McSweeney's article 'The Great Book Blockade'. Feel free to submit questions during the hour.

Robin Hemley will also be reading from Do Over! tonight at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City at 7pm. If you are unable to attend the reading you can listen to it live at the Writing University website.

We will be posting the responses as they are answered, therefore there may be some delay between answers. Thanks, and enjoy!

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Cheyenne, Iowa City: Hello. My question has to do with the adage "There's nothing new under the sun" to write about... that all topics and themes have been addressed in literature... as Janet Burroway says, there are only so many themes, or stories. How do you navigate this question in terms of your own writing? Do you feel pressure as a writer to consciously try to "Make it new" in any way, whether via original language, unique framing, experimentally-driven narrative, etc? I often wonder whether writing that isn't striving for at least one new or different aspect in some sense is worth writing or reading. It seems like so much out there sounds the same. Thank you.

Robin Hemley: Hi Cheyenne:

Sure, there's nothing new under the sun in certain ways, but the adage 'make it new" is something I try to follow without being overly self-conscious about it. Although I certainly have played with form in much of my work, such as my memoir NOLA, essentially a pastiche or collage kind of memoir, I let each work I'm writing reveal its form to me, whether traditional or experimental. But I don't try to make some new simply for novelty's sake. Publishers and editors treat the subject of "newness" in an intriguing way. You might write a story about a goldfish but if the publication you've submitted it to has run something within the last year with anything that vaguely resembles a goldfish, they will certainly reject the piece no matter how different the pieces are. Broadly stated, you're writing about the same thing, but if you read the two goldfish pieces, they might be nothing at all like one another. That's all to say that yes, in a broad sense, nothing is new, but most writers know that their perspective is going to be different from anyone else's -- if they have strong imaginations among other writerly necessities. Personally, I don't worry about it much - part of the fun of being a writer is NOT being completely new, but imagining yourself as part of an ongoing conversation with other writers, past and present. When I was in graduate school, my classmates were always talking about "finding your voice." This always made me a little nervous because I hadn't known it was missing until I reached graduate school. Happily, it was still there waiting for me when I graduated. In other words, sometimes self-consciousness about "finding one's voice" or "making it new" actually do more harm than good.

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Elizabeth, North Liberty IA: Mr. Hemley, I have question about your book "Do Over": I was wondering if the process of going through your childhood experiences again helped you understand what the world is like today for your own children?

Robin Hemley: Yes, it did. For me, that was a central part of the book, one of its joys. I as able to get a fresh look at childhood by stepping back into the world of childhood, and the project sparked many conversations between myself and my daughters. There are a lot of things that are different now for children, and many are well-documented: children are over scheduled, over protected, sometimes over praised. I certainly found this with my daughters. They were in so many activities that it seemed to stress them out. I don't remember feeling an iota of the stress my older daughters feel. This concerns me a bit because I always want my children to have some outlet for relaxation -- for them, it's reading, which of course, I approve of. I wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal recently called "Things That Could Have Killed Me," all about my own hypocrisy as a parent. I was always getting into mischief when I was a boy. I even built a bomb when I was nine. While not quite a helicopter parent, I do tend to hover more than my own parents did. Yet I'm not convinced that the world is appreciably less safe than it was when I was a kid. I can list a hundred things that were much more unsafe when I was a kid, starting with no one using safety belts. Anyway, my bottom line is that the world has always been a dangerous place for kids and adults and always will be.

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Rick, Chattanooga: DO OVER starts off very comically, and then, while the comic aspect remains, there is an undercurrent that is hard to pin done -- not anything like melancholy, but a more serious sense of how we are what we are and get to be that way... did you have a sense of that as you were working your way through the do overs and through the book?

Robin Hemley: I'm glad you noticed that. I think that setting the tone of the book was one of the big challenges, but that also reflects the changes in my attitude toward the project in the beginning versus my attitude towards the end. At first, I thought of the project as a bit of a lark, a kind of Billy Madison romp through childhood. Of course, I wanted that to be a big part of the book, but I also didn't want to write a book that was total fluff either. As the do overs progressed, I found that the memories being called up were quite powerful and often took me by surprise. Likewise, I wanted to include my daughters in the project, too, because from a very early stage, I saw this as a book about parenthood and specifically fatherhood. I'm divorced from the mother of my two older daughters, and so part of my story in Do Over also involves my attempt to explore my relationship with them as well as my relationship with my other younger daughter, Shoshie. I wasn't only doing over my past, but trying to learn from my mistakes as a parent so I wouldn't have to do over my present. Is it possible to live a life without regrets? That's sort of an unstated question in the book. And do we really learn from our past mistakes? So these are serious questions that hopefully inform a comic and ironic look at foibles and embarrassments.

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Susannah in Dallas: Is there anything you would do over about the process of writing this book? Any hard-won knowledge to share with others approaching immersion memoir?

Robin Hemley: I think right now the answer is "no." I might like to do over a couple of interviews I've given for the book, but as far as the process goes, it went surprisingly smoothly. Still, such a book is frightening to contemplate in that so much depends on setting out to do something and hoping that interesting things happen as a result. I think some editors are wary of backing such a project if the results seem too difficult to predict. What helped with this project is that it didn't depend on things always working out. If I failed a do over (and I'd say I only failed one), that in itself was inherently as dramatic and potentially funny as succeeding in one. So my advice would be to make sure as much as possible that whatever you immerse yourself in is something that you can make a story from whether your endeavor is successful or not.

But as far as doing over the process or the writing of the book, I can't think of anything. It was really the most fun I've ever had writing a book.

Oh, there IS one thing! This time, I would bring along a documentary filmmaker perhaps! I'm glad I had photographs at least.

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Thomas Vakulskas Iowa City: Did the WSJ solicit your recent article or did you submit it?

Robin Hemley: They more or less solicited it, though I had been asking to something along these lines for them. I've been writing for them for a little while so I have a working relationship with them.

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Chris J. Chicago IL: I recently read your article in McSweeney's about the book blockade in the Phillipines and it seems like it was a very touchy topic to report on. Did you encounter any obstacles in writing the piece? And after it was published, was their any backfire, politically or socially?

Robin Hemley: Wow, was there EVER a response to that. You might want to take a look at my follow up article in the FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW (FEER.com): "Notes from a Blockade Runner" in which I detail the response. I wrote the piece because I was in the Philippines and when I found out that the Philippines was violating an international treaty by taxing imported books, I was shocked. At first, I contacted five of my Filipino writer friends and suggested they should investigate and perhaps protest to PEN International. Two of my friends never responded. Two said they knew nothing about it. But one said he knew about it and introduced me to a book store owner who started to fill me in on the sordid details. This began my investigation. I thought when I wrote the piece that no one would be interested except for my small following on McSweeney's. I was wrong. Within 24 hours, the story had gone "viral" as they say. To make a long story short, within a month, the president of the Philippines had reversed the illegal tax thanks largely to the mobilization of thousands of book lovers in the Philippines. I found the whole thing quite inspiring.

The response to the article was overwhelmingly positive, but at first I wondered whether I should even write it. Now I'm glad I did.

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Bee Bee Rabozo: Your writing, especially "Do Over" made my sides ache with laughter. When I write and try to be funny, it doesn't bring that sort of reaction. How do you do it?

Robin Hemley: Thank you! Frankly, I just see the world in an absurd way, I guess. I remember that Stephen King once said that he writes to frighten himself. When I write I try to make myself laugh. It's not always easy to make me laugh, so I'm a tough audience. I've always loved to make people laugh, from when I was a kid and used to entertain my family with absurd anecdotes rather than eat.

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Rick, Chattanooga: Sorry, this is my second question. Obviously you can't put everything that happened to you in any of do overs into the space of a chapter. So I was wondering what process you went through in selecting specific things, and which chapter was the most difficult to write about.

Robin Hemley: I always had a little notebook with me, and I took copious notes in it. I loved these little notebooks because they invariably contained nuggets that I knew I was going to incorporate into the book long before I sat down to write a chapter. This had the effect also of jump starting my mind in terms of the narrative of each chapter so that by the time I sat down I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to include and what I didn't. I took many more notes than I could include in the book, and when I started to write I flipped through my notes of each do over and then found a place that seemed a natural beginning. Then I started to shape the chapter. Consequently, there were things that I knew would not fit the shape I had chosen. I found it most difficult to write about living in my old home again. My mother passed away two years earlier (though she hadn't lived in this home for many years) and this was the home in which my older sister had died. At first, I took the chapter out but my editor made me put it back in. I'm glad he did.

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Sara, Middle Tennessee: How are you promoting your new book? What are the challenges to marketing such a book - well, any book for that matter?

Robin Hemley: Oh, these days so much of a book's promotion falls upon the author. As print reviews dry up at an alarming rate, word-of-mouth becomes ever more crucial and especially on the internet. Publishers are very wary about spending advertising money, too, and they consider most book signings a waste unless it's in your home town. So I'm doing a lot of radio, and that's both fun and nerve-wracking, especially the live shows. But I'm happy to do it. You spend a lot of time on a book and you want to make sure it has the best shot in the world possible.

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cheyenne, iowa city: Hello. Did you find, while researching your book, and being at camp, and all the other things that went into writing it- that you were able to access childhood memories more easily? Can you recall any instances where you remembered things you wish you hadn't, that were a surprise to you- and the converse- things you'd forgotten you were pleased to remember? (sorry, i still have not read the book but will). --did you find any ways to access memories you'd forgotten or did or just happen organically for you?

Robin Hemley: Yes, as a matter of fact, I was constantly stunned by the memories being called up. Sure, there were some unpleasant memories, but I was able to examine them and come to some understanding of why a particular do over was important to me based on some of the memories being called up. But I've always had a good memory of my childhood and have been able to call up events from that time quite easily (I've had a lot of practice), so there were no dark secrets that were uncovered - more like associations. For instance, when my do over kindergarten teacher asked us to draw a pleasant memory, I drew a picture of my older daughters and myself blueberry picking on Mt. Baker in Washington State. It's the first thing that came to mind. I'm divorced and we haven't picked blueberries on Mt. Baker for many years so when I drew this picture it floored me. That was perhaps the first time in the project that I was surprised by the force of emotion of something I hadn't expected.

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Suzanne Z., Minneapolis: Is the gift of writing in one's DNA or can one develop the talent to write? I have an MBA in Finance, but want to escape from the travails of Wall Street, do you think writing can be taught, learned, practiced...Or should I just throw in the towel right here, right now.

Robin Hemley: This is an age-old question. The subject of can writing be taught was just written about in The New Yorker a week ago. The standard answer is that craft can be taught but genius can't of course. Still, there are so many reasons to write and to pursue it. Obviously, not everyone is going to become a James Baldwin or Flannery O'Connor, but there are plenty of people who have taken up writing later (who weren't born to it) who have done quite well as writers. Frank McCourt had an entire career as a teacher (though I know he wrote as well during this time) before he wrote a book at age 62, I believe. There are scores of examples of writers who are wonderful who came to it late. It takes passion and persistence and happily, there's no sign posted anywhere in the writing world that reads, MBA's need not Apply. Yes, it can be learned and there are plenty of places where you can learn it. How far you go with it is to a certain extent up to you.
________________________________________

Vivienne, Dallas: Which of the do overs was the most difficult to write, whether from a technique or personal point of view, and why?

Robin Hemley: As I mentioned, I think the most difficult one for me was visiting a childhood home. This was logistically difficult to begin with. I moved around a lot when I was a child and so I had a number of homes to choose from. Still, would you let a complete stranger live in your home with you for a week simply because he says he's writing a book? I hit upon the idea of sending FEDEX letters to the occupants of my various homes so that they might open the letters and read them at least. I wrote my letter on university stationery and included my proto do over article from NEW YORK MAGAZINE so they would know I was legit. Still, I only heard from one person who was wary of me. She eventually said "no," and I was going to give up on the do over when about five months later I received an e-mail out of the blue from a woman who lived in another of my homes. She said she would agree if I kept her anonymous, which I did. It worked out just fine, but it was an emotionally difficult chapter and I wanted to remove it but my editor talked me out of it.

I also hated my attempt to take the ACT test, for a variety of reasons, some of which should be self-evident!

________________________________________

Susannah, Dallas: Second question -- You mentioned you'd do-over some of your recent radio interviews. Since radio has become so frequent a promotional tool, what about those interviews would you do over? Approach, length of responses, yay or nay ahead of time on particular shows or broadcast times? Something else entirely?

Robin Hemley: Most of the shows are just fine but I think it's important to screen the show and get a sense of what the show is about. The Talk Radio Shows are the ones I'm most wary of. I agreed early on to be on a silly show from Austin whose name I've blocked. But it was moronic. As soon as I was patched in, it became clear that they were going to simply riff on my title and do a really stupid schtick on "Do over." I tried to undermine them as much as possible but I would have preferred not going through it in the first place. I was also on a syndicated radio show in Philly done by a conservative talk show host after my WSJ article appeared. The problem with such hosts is that they have most often some social agenda they're touting while you're hoping to say at least something about your book. So that was a bit of a wash. On the other hand, there are a lot of radio hosts who do their homework and ask bright questions . . . I'm happy to do these. Basically, I think it's important not to ramble and also to have a few key anecdotes that you think exemplify your book. But also, keep your cool and don't necessarily answer every question -- like a politician, answer the question you wish you had been asked.

________________________________________

Michael; Des Moines: Robin - I enjoyed meeting & talking w/ you the other night @ Beaverdale Books. My question: how do you learn to trust an editor?

Robin Hemley: I love working with editors. I've had very few bad experiences. They are really on your side and while you don't have to agree with everything they suggest, there's definitely going to be some give and take. That said, in every book of mine there's always something that's taken out that I fight for (and usually lose), generally something to do with my bizarre sense of humor. Sometimes my editors think I go over the top and want to rein me in. I don't always agree, but they have the power. As a writer, you have to learn to compromise. Hemingway made fun of John Dos Passos saying once, "You can turn him on the rack, but that comma stays in!" I was once told by an editor that she loved to deal with experienced writers because they understood the process much better than green writers who were often way too full of themselves when it came to the editing process. Again, it's mostly a matter of compromise.

________________________________________

Jennifer, Detroit: Robin, Can you talk a little bit about how it felt to live out moments you knew you would write about? Did you hear yourself writing as you were running on the playground, for instance, almost as voice-over? I guess I'm wondering how you managed to experience your Do-overs authentically before crafting them. Thanks.

Robin Hemley: Good question. I felt that I was three people at once half the time as I was experiencing my do overs. I was remembering the original experience. I was living a new experience. And I was the writer observing it all. I had no trouble keeping all three of these "selves" in my head at once. Although I was taking notes, I was very much into the experience and of course I couldn't always take notes. I did that after the fact sometimes. It's kind of like a photographer who takes thousands of photos. At first, his/her subjects are wary and stiff around the camera, but then they stop seeing it almost. For me, it was similar as a writer. I rarely thought I was hamming it up, and I rarely thought anyone else was hamming it up. If they did, I certainly didn't include that scene in the book. Mostly, the kids seemed quite relaxed around me.

________________________________________

Rick, Chattanooga: How does your writing affect your teaching, and how does teaching affect your writing?

Robin Hemley: I'm affected variously by my teaching. I never would have written Do Over if not for my teaching. It came directly out of a brainstorming session I was holding with my grad students here in Iowa. I truly love teaching and I love writing and I find the enthusiasm of my students rubbing off on me. But like everything, teaching should be done in moderation!

________________________________________

Moderator: Well, we have reached the end of our time with Robin, thanks to everybody who submitted questions! Any questions submitted during the hour that were not posted here in the 1 p.m. - 2 p.m. time frame will be posted later on the Live Discussion archive. And remember to check back for more upcoming Live Discussion in the future. Robin Hemley will be reading from Do Over! tonight at Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City at 7pm. If you are unable to attend the reading you can listen to it live at the Writing University website.

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Editor's Note: The Writing University moderators retain editorial control over discussions and choose the most relevant questions and can decline to answer questions.

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June 11, 2009
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Live Discussion: UI Nonfiction’s Robin Hemley Online Chat

As the first session in a series of moderated Writing University 'Live Discussions', we hosted a chat with Robin Hemley, faculty member of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Robin conversed with readers about a variety of literary topics, including his new book 'Do Over!,' in which he attempts to repair the major embarrassments of his childhood and adolescence, as well as the international action spurred by his McSweeney's article 'The Great Book Blockade'.

>> Read the archived live discussion here.

Nonfiction | Faculty | Nonfiction Writing Program Email this article

‘Elevenses’ Literary Hour Opens the Iowa Summer Writing Festival to the Public

Beginning June 7, the 'Elevenses' Literary Hour will open the Iowa Summer Writing Festival to the public, with free presentations of interest to writers by festival faculty at 11 a.m. every weekday that the festival is in session, in Room 101 of the University of Iowa Biology Building East.

Elevenses presentations might include aspects of craft, of process, of the writing life or of publishing. There will be a different presenter each day. Fridays in the 'Elevenses' series are reserved for a faculty reading.

Week-long sessions of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival begin June 7, with weekly sessions every week through July 20-24, with the exception of Independence Day week. Visit the Iowa Summer Writing Festival website for more information.

June 01, 2009
Fiction | Poetry | Nonfiction | Summer Writing Festival Email this article

Workshop Alum Rao’s Novel ‘In Hanuman’s Hands’ Reviewed

Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Srinivas Cheeni Rao's new memoir, In Hanuman's Hands, received a detailed review in a recent edition of the Chicago Reader. Weaving its way through the novel's plot, (which describes Rao's belief that Hanuman, the Hindu monkey deity, helped him through his trials with drug addiction and homelessness), the Chicago Reader explores the tapestry of spiritual events described in the text:

"As a toddler, Srinivas 'Cheeni' Rao was snatched out of a car’s path by a stranger who delivered him to the arms of his terrified mother, touched her cheek, and vanished. 'She often says she knew it was a god,' Rao says. 'The moment he touched her, she knew.'

"At Lyons Township High School, he was 'an exceptional student, the top of my class, an athlete,' Rao says. But what he describes in his memoir as his 'Indian immigrant high-achiever mask' covered up 'two suicide attempts in high school, my nighttime addiction to breaking and entering houses, [and] that I’d burned my neighbor’s house down in a fit of rage.' Maybe it was Hanuman who miraculously kept him out of jail." read more...

Read >> Chicago Reader review: How’s Your Relationship With the Monkey God?

May 29, 2009
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Robin Hemley’s Article ‘The Great Book Blockade of 2009’ Sparks International Attention

Illustration by Eric Agoncillo Ambata

Published earlier this month, Robin Hemley's article 'The Great Book Blockade of 2009', has already become an international news item. In this nonfiction piece, Hemley (faculty member of the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Program) describes how the Philippines broke an international U.N. Treaty and taxed imported books in violation of that treaty. Less than two weeks after release, the article quickly transcended from the internet blogosphere into the mainstream media, catching the attention of UNESCO and spurring calls in the Philippine Senate for an investigation.

Hemley's interest in the affair began when he spent the better part of a year from 2008 to late spring of 2009 in the Philippines with his family on a Guggenheim Fellowship. He wrote several articles during his time there, including the six-part series 'Dispatches from Manila', but none had sparked as much attention as this piece. Much of the media frenzy began when a timeline of the entire controversy, including Hemley's breaking of the story, was posted on Manuel L. Quezon III's blog, The Daily Dose. It has also been reported in the Manila Bulletin, where Hemley is credited with coining the phrase 'The Great Book Blockade'.

You can read Robin Hemley's article on McSweeney's Online Tendency and his comments about it on his blog, RobinHemley.com.

UPDATE

Since this article was published, Phillipine President Arroyo has lifted the 'blockade.' UNESCO condemned the Philippines for breaking its international treaty obligations. Effective immediately, and in a large part because of the attention that Robin Hemley's article brought to the incident, there will be no taxes on imported books. Read his wrap up article on the Far Eastern Economic Review website.

May 19, 2009
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UI Translation Alum Thow Wins Fulbright Research Grant

Diana Thow, a graduate of the University of Iowa's Translation Workshop, has been awarded a 2009-10 Fulbright Research Grant to Italy for a project entitled "Amelia Rosselli: Across Language."

While in Italy, Thow will work in the archives (located in the north of Italy in a town called Pavia and on the outskirts of Rome) that contain the papers, manuscripts, journals and correspondence of the poet Amelia Rosselli, the subject of Thow's MFA thesis at Iowa. She will continue to translate Rosselli's poetry, and compile an edition of her uncollected English writings.

Thow is a graduate of the MFA program in literary translation and former editor of eXchanges magazine.

May 14, 2009
Alumni | Translation | Translation MFA Email this article

91st Meridian’s New Issue Online

A new issue of 91st Meridian, the International Writing Program's on-line journal, has been released. In the “creativity portfolio” that opens the new issue, Kiran Nagarkar makes a case for Shiva’s Blue Throat as a writer’s most important organ. Kei Miller wonders whether being sit-down poet is better than being the stand-up kind. Polina Kopylova introduces the Lito, Russia’s literary greenhouses for growing new crops of poets, equivalents of the American creative writing workshop.

Also in this issue -- fragments from novels by Ameena Hussein and Mazen Saadeh as well as two intimate pieces by the Korean poet Gyeongee Kim.

Read 91st Meridian Issue 6.2 here.

May 12, 2009
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Workshop Alum Herrera Wins National Book Critics Circle Award

The 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry was shared by two writers with close connections to the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Workshop alumnus Juan Felipe Herrera was honored for "Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems," and former faculty member August Kleinzahler was honored for "Sleeping It Off in Rapid City." Herrera, the son the Mexican migrant workers, was a teaching fellow at the UI, winning an Excellence in Teaching Award in 1990, the year that he received his Master of Fine Arts degree.

"By the time I stepped into the workshop, I had been writing and performing poetry in various forms, from spoken word to poetry-in-performance and Teatro Chicano for 20 years," Herrera says. "Yet, a personal revolution occurred when I walked into workshops held by Marvin Bell, Gerald Stern and Jorie Graham. "Marvin assisted me from day one (and still does), as a mentor and as a fiery maestro at the table of the word. Although this may sound easy, from Marvin I came to grips with the architecture of a poem in all its aspects. Everything about my writing changed, and my work grew exponentially. It was a monumental change that still carries me forward to this day.

"Stern was another matter. In Gerry's workshop I came face to face with the powers of simplicity and the dangers of obscure language and evasive narrative. After resisting it, in time, simplicity proved to be a great ally. I also tapped into what we can call 'tone.'

"In Jorie's class, the problematic was how to strip language down to minute particles and then re-construct without ever 'staining' what is being said. This led me to rethink the poem, its construction and also how to talk about the poem and its workings. Read more...

May 04, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Poetry | Faculty Email this article

UI Press Releases Two Volumes of Poetry Scholarship

The University of Iowa Press will release two new volumes of literary scholarship this month -- "12 x 12: Conversations in 21st-Century Poetry and Poetics" and "History Matters: Contemporary Poetry on the Margins of American Culture".

"12 x 12," edited by Christina Mengert and Joshua Marie Wilkinson, assembles the views of 24 poets through their one-on-one pairings. UI Writers' Workshop faculty member Cole Swensen wrote, "'12 x 12' is truly representative of the best in early 21st-century poetry. Because the poets, both younger and older, are particularly socially and intellectually dynamic, Mengert and Wilkinson's volume presents poetry as socially and politically relevant and underscores the potential for poets to be important thinkers in society. The conversations show that poets think about much more than poetry itself and that their work is crucially informed by contemporary events, philosophy, and the realities of daily life."

Ira Sadoff's "History Matters" argues that poets live and write within history, and that our artistic values always reflect attitudes about both literary history and culture at large. By tracking key contemporary poets -- including John Ashbery, Olena Kalytiak Davis, Louise Glück, Czeslaw Milosz, Frank O'Hara and C. K. Williams -- as well as musing on jazz and other creative enterprises, he investigates the lively poetic art of those who have grappled with late 20th-century attitudes about history, subjectivity, contingency, flux and modernity. Read more...

April 27, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Poetry | Faculty | UI Press Email this article

‘The Examined Life’ Conference Focuses on Creative Writing in Medical Education

The University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine will host a three-day conference, April 29th - May 1st, 2009, focusing on the links between the science of medicine and the art of writing.

The conference hopes to foster a collaboration and discussion involving the role of writing in medical education. Sessions will focus on the benefits of writing throughout a lifelong career as a physician, as well as the role of creative writing in patient care. Participants will be able to take advantage of skill-building sessions on writing, editing, and publishing creative work.

The conference will also feature keynote presentations, offered free to the public, by Fady Joudah, Danielle Ofri and Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty member Marilynne Robinson. The entire 'The Examined Life' conference is free for UI students.

Visit the website for more information on The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine.

April 20, 2009
Fiction | Poetry | Nonfiction | Science/Medical Writing Email this article

Review: UI Nonfiction Director Hemley’s ‘Do Over’

In this Publisher Weekly review of Do Over, the latest release from Robin Hemley, the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program Director, Hemley's unique experiment of revisiting childhood is described as "endearing, funny and more than a bit courageous."

"When Hemley, a writing professor at the University of Iowa, decides that he wants to do over some of the experiences he flubbed as a child, he isn't just dreaming. The 48-year-old father of three makes a list of times and places he'd like to revisit, including kindergarten, the prom and summer camp, doggedly pursuing all the contacts and background checks necessary to 'storm the walls of childhood' as an adult." Publishers Weekly praises Hemley as "a big kid at heart," drawing readers in "with just the right mix of humor and tenderness."

In addition to this, New York Magazine recently ran an excerpt from Do Over (entitled "Big Man on Camp") on their highlighted features section, in which the author compares the comically barbaric world of 1970's summer camp with the more refined system of the "youth-development business" today. For readers interested in taking a deeper look into the project, as well as finding media, blog entries and a list of Robin Hemley's upcoming appearances, the recently launched website for Do Over presents a wide offering of links and content. Visit the Do Over website here: http://robinhemley.com

Read >> Review of "Do Over"
Read >> "Big Man on Camp"

April 14, 2009
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UI Poetry Class Blog Reviews Readings in Iowa City

Incorporating a new teaching style into his classes, University of Iowa assistant professor Mike Chasar has initiated public poetry blogging as part of his syllabus for the requirements for his two poetry classes. Chasar's students must attend at least two poetry readings and then post public reviews of those readings on their class blog Iowa City Poetry Readings. These innovative reviews represent the wide range of literary events occurring in Iowa City, from Prairie Lights readings and Talk Art at the Mill to the Mission Creek Festival performance by GZA and an evening of 19th century recitations & music hosted by Old Capitol Museum.

Although it is fairly typical for English teachers to have students attend readings and complete response papers for a grade, Chasar has found that by making the responses public, on a blog-style website, the writing "is fascinating and, in most cases, better than what [he] would have received on paper doing it the old-fashioned way." It is beneficial not just for the students, but also for their peers and others interested in the literary life of Iowa City.

Read the online poetry reviews here: http://iowacitypoetryreadings.blogspot.com/

April 09, 2009
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UNESCO Gala Event at the Englert Theater, April 7

The University of Iowa and Iowa City welcomed Ali Bowden, the director of Edinburgh’s City of Literature and a driving force behind UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network, with a public event on Tuesday, April 7 at 5 p.m. at the Englert Theater. The entire community was invited to attend this talk and reception, with the purpose of understanding the possibilities for Iowa City as a UNESCO City of Literature. Ms. Bowden also be discussed the Network of Cities of Literature, which now includes Edinburgh, Iowa City and Melbourne and will soon be expanding to other cities.

The event featured a reading by poet laureate Marvin Bell, remarks by former Iowa City Mayor Ross Wilburn and comments from the University of Iowa President Sally Mason. For more information visit http://www.unescoiowacity.com.

April 03, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Fiction | Poetry | Nonfiction | Translation | English Department | International Writing Program | Nonfiction Writing Program | Playwrights Workshop | School of Journalism | UNESCO Email this article

UNESCO City of Literature

INTERVIEWS & READINGS

Video: Marvin Bell >> "Writers in a Café": a UNESCO poem | June 21, 2008

In this video, Poet Laureate Marvin Bell discusses the history of writing in Iowa City and reads his poem “Writers in a Café”.

Audio: Marvin Bell >>

"I suspect Iowa City has more writers per capita than anywhere else. Someone asked me on the phone one time during an interview, "Are you the best poet in Iowa City?," and I said, "I'm the best poet on the 1400 block of E. College Street, unless someone has moved in recently that I don't know about..."

International Writing Program Archive >>

This eight-minute tape gives a comprehensive look at the International Writing Program in the past and tells the story of the restructuring of the program in 1999.

Poets Against the War >>

This reading in Iowa City, IA was organized in conjunction with the national grassroots movement, Poets Against the War, and features poets associated with the Writers’ Workshop and the International Writing Program. Marvin Bell introduces the reading, and then Kiki Petrosino speaks briefly about the spirit and purpose of the reading. Poets Marvin Bell, James Galvin, David Hamilton, John Mateer, James McKean, Dave Morice, Mani Rao, Mary Ruefle, Mary Swander, Jan Weissmiller, and Dean Young each read a selection of poems.

The Iowa Review >>

David Hamilton, editor of the Iowa Review, begins the reading with a moment of silence for the hostage tragedy in Beslan, Russia. He notes that every issue of the Iowa Review features a “Human Rights Index.” Hamilton introduces author Yiyun Li. Yiyun Li reads her short story, “The Ground Floor,” and then she and David Hamilton take questions from the audience. September 03, 2004

<< Back to the Iowa City UNESCO main page

March 27, 2009
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2008 Iowa Poetry Prize Winner Zach Savich on BlogTalkRadio

On this episode of the 'BlogTalkRadio' show Onword, Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Zach Savich speaks with host Rafael F.J. Alvarado about his new book Full Catastrophe Living, which recently won the 2008 Iowa Poetry Prize. Savich reads selections from the collection (including “Why Lie" and “Serenade”) while discussing the relationship of the book’s title to the present day world as well as his process of composing and editing.

Zach Savich received a BA in English from the University of Washington and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is currently in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is a teaching assistant. His poems and essays have appeared in the Colorado Review, the Beloit Poetry Journal, jubilat, Court Green, the Denver Quarterly and the anthology Best New Poets 2008. He is an editor at Thermos Magazine.

March 25, 2009
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“Conversations from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop” Premieres on Big Ten Network

"Conversations from the Iowa Writers' Workshop," a new series produced by the University of Iowa Center for Media Production, debuted on the Big Ten Network this year, featuring interviews with award-winning writers associated with the creative writing program at Iowa.

The first program featured workshop alumna Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of "Prep" and "American Wife." The second broadcast highlighted Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham. Future programs will feature Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson, alumnus and faculty member Ethan Canin, author of "America America," and recent workshop guest Andre Dubus III.

Watch >> Michael Cunningham Interview
Watch >> Curtis Sittenfeld Interview

The program is hosted by Writers' Workshop graduate and International Writing Program staff member Kecia Lynn. The full programing is available on the Center for Media website which has an archive of all previous UI programs. It is also available on the center's main site.

March 23, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Alumni | Fiction | Poetry | Faculty | New Media Email this article

Iowa Summer Writing Festival 2009 Registration Now Open

The Iowa Summer Writing Festival has announced the opening of its 2009 registration period. Held in the vibrant literary atmosphere of Iowa City (recently named a UNESCO City of Literature), the festival offers many opportunities to meet other writers, share work, explore the bookstores and local literary haunts, as well as enjoy concerts, plays and the museums on campus. Readings by outstanding contemporary voices, hosted by Prairie Lights Bookstore, are always a favorite among festival participants as well.

Offering one-week and weekend sessions throughout the months of June and July, with 140 writing workshops across the genres, the festival is an opportunity for writers to share their work in a constructive and creative environment.

For more information and guidelines on how to register, visit the Iowa Summer Writing Festival website.

March 18, 2009
Fiction | Poetry | Nonfiction | Summer Writing Festival Email this article

Kei Miller’s “Broken”

Kei Miller reads an excerpt from his poem "Broken" during an interview with IWP staff member Hugh Ferrer. 2007.

Listen: Broken (excerpt)

March 04, 2009
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IWP Alum Anat Pick Featured on ‘Hard to Say’ Podcast

"When we are surprised by art -- as I was surprised by the work of sound-text-performance artist Anat Pick -- new experiences are possible, because our defenses are down." In this episode of Hard to Say, featured recordings from former International Writing Program participant Anat Pick's recording 'Voice: Dada Sound Poetry' explore the new possibilities in performance reading.

Listen to the recording: Hard to Say #29: The Defense of Meaning: Encountering Dada.

Anat PICK (sound-text performance artist; Israel) began her career as a pianist, eventually branching out to develop a repertoire of innovative language-oriented performance, one elaborating from the base of a phonetic mixture of eastern and western languages. For the past decade, Pick has given concerts across Israel, the Far East, and Europe. Her many collaborations with other artists and musicians have involved a variety of forms, including spoken word and free-improvisation. She maintains an intense interest in the performance of Dada sound poetry.

Poetry | International Writing Program | New Media | Podcasts Email this article

WU Podcast: Workshop/IWP Reading > Nkengasong, Eltayeb and Talone

In this Writing University podcast, Iowa Writers' Workshop student Bridget Talone reads with International Writing Program participants John Nkengasong and Tarek Eltayeb at Prairie Lights Bookstore in downtown Iowa City. Talone reads from her work, including "Dear God With Rocks in My Mouth," a poem in six parts. Nkengasong shares part of his recent novel The Widow's Might and Eltayeb reads poems from his collection Brittle Conversation, in both German and English.

Listen:
John Nkengasong, Tarek Eltayeb and Bridget Talone

Bridget TALONE grew up outside of Philadelphia, attended Sarah Lawrence College and worked at the Dodge Poetry Festival before coming to the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has poems published in Tin House magazine.

John Nkemngong NKENGASONG (Novelist, Fiction Writer, Poet, Playwright; Cameroon) is a prolific writer and literary critic whose work ranges across genres and disciplines. He has published two novels (most recently The Widow's Might (2006) and Across the Mongolo, 2004), one play (Black Caps and Red Feathers, 2001), and his poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies throughout Africa and the United States. He is currently Associate Professor at the University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon.

Tarek ELTAYEB (novelist, fiction writer, poet, playwright; Austria) was born in Cairo to Sudanese parents and educated in Austria. He has published five collections of poems, most recently Bacd Az-Zann [‘Certain Suspicions’] (2007), two novels Bayt An-Nakhil [‘The Palm House’] (2006), and Mudun Bila Nakhil [‘Cities Without Palms’] (1992), two short story collections, and a play El-Asanser [‘The Elevator’], (1992). His writings have been translated into several languages, including English.

To subscribe to this podcast through iTunes, select the "Advanced" menu, and click "Subscribe to Podcast." Paste the following web address, and click "Okay."

http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/iTunesRSS/

February 27, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | International Writing Program | Podcasts Email this article

Robin Hemley

Robin Hemley has published seven books of nonfiction and fiction. His latest book, Invented Eden, The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003) deals with a purported anthropological hoax in the Philippines. James Hamilton Paterson, writing in the London Review of Books, call Invented Eden, "brave and wholly convincing." John Leonard writes in Harpers, "Besides a terrific story, Invented Eden is a savvy caution." Invented Eden was an American Library Association's Editor's Choice book for 2003.

Robin Hemley co-edited the anthology Extreme Fiction:Fabulists and formalists with Michael Martone (Longman, 2004), and is the author of the memoir, Nola: A Memoir Of Faith, Art And Madness (Graywolf, 1998), which won an Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction. His popular craft book Turning Life Into Fiction, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection as well as a Quality Paperback Book Club Selection has sold over 40,000 copies and will soon be reissued by Graywolf Press. He is also the author of the novel, The Last Studebake (Graywolf) and the story collections, The Big Ear (Blair) and All You Can Eat (Atlantic Monthly Press).

His awards for his fiction include, The Nelson Algren Award from The Chicago Tribune, The George Garrett Award for Fiction from Willow Springs, the Hugh J. Luke Award from Prairie Schooner, two Pushcart Prizes, and many others. He has published his work in many of the best literary magazines in the country, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Willow Springs, Boulevard, Witness, ACM, North American Review, and many others. His fiction has been widely anthologized, translated, and heard on NPR's "Selected Shorts" and others. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and has taught at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Western Washington University, St. Lawrence University, Vermont College, and the University of Utah, and in many Summer writing conferences. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellingham Review for five years.

Nonfiction | Faculty | Nonfiction Writing Program | Letters | H Email this article

Writing Acts as Therapy, UI Researcher Finds

Howard Butcher, an associate professor at the University of Iowa College of Nursing, recently completed a study exploring the therapeutic effects of writing. In many ways, his research can now begin to further foster a relationship between creative writing and the medical profession. Through his study with Alzheimer’s disease caregivers who wrote in journals about their emotions and thoughts, Butcher found those who wrote about current traumas in an expressive and creative way reported lower stress levels in their lives. “A lot of people keep diaries...” Butcher said. “Until this research, we didn’t know that it physiologically and psychologically makes a difference.”

Read more:
Prof: Journal writing becomes therapy

February 24, 2009
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‘Pulitzer Town’ Timeline Highlights Iowa City’s Prize Recipients

Compiling the Pulitzer Prize winning authors that have been associated with the University of Iowa through the years, Little Village magazine recently constructed an extensive 'Pulitzer Town' timeline, that harvests the history of Iowa's awarded writers, complete with images and biographies. From early Pulitzer recipients Robert Lowell and Tennessee Williams to modern winners Robert Hass and Marilynne Robinson, the diagram allows viewers to explore the authors and navigate their way through the interwoven history between the prize and Iowa City. Visit the timeline here: Pulitzer Town

Little Village is a free monthly news and entertainment magazine covering news and culture from a refreshing perspective in Iowa City. Visit their website here: LittleVillageMag.com

February 18, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Fiction | Poetry | Nonfiction | Journalism | New Media Email this article

Writing University Podcast: IWP Participants Raimo and Madzirov

In this Writing University podcast, International Writing Program participants Veronica Raimo and Nikola Madzirov read their work at Prairie Lights Bookstore in downtown Iowa City. Madzirov reads from a selection of poems, including 'After Us' and 'A Way of Existing.' Raimo reads from a section of her novel Il dolore secondo Matteo.

Listen:
Veronica Raimo and Nikola Madzirov

Nikola MADZIROV (poet, essayist, translator; Macedonia) is the author of five collections of poetry, including [‘Relocated Stone’] (2007), which won both the Hubert Burda Poetry Award and the Miladinov Brothers Award in 2007. Madzirov’s work has been translated into dozens of languages, including English. He has participated in writing residencies in Vienna, Graz, and Krems. Among is editing projects are Babylonia, a multilingual literature project, and BLESOK; he is among the coordinators of Lyikline. He attends courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State.

Veronica RAIMO (fiction writer, poet, playwright, screenwriter, translator; Italy) debuted with her novel, Il dolore secondo Matteo [‘Pain According to Matteo’], released by Minimum Fax in 2007; her short stories have meanwhile appeared in journals and anthologies throughout Italy. A second novel is in preparation, under contract with Rizzoli Publishers. In addition, Raimo contributes regularly to Italian magazines such as Rolling Stones and Liberazione. She attends courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State.

To subscribe to this podcast through iTunes, select the "Advanced" menu, and click "Subscribe to Podcast." Paste the following web address, and click "Okay."

http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/iTunesRSS/

February 12, 2009
International Writing Program | Podcasts Email this article

Workshop Graduate Featured on ‘Be Remarkable’

"Jeremy Jackson can’t recall a time when he didn’t want to be a writer. 'It was something I always sort of had in my mind,' says Jackson, a 1997 graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. 'By high school it was something I was pretty interested in and started pursuing pretty strongly.'"

In this University of Iowa 'Be Remarkable' feature, Jeremy Jackson traces his present-day publishing success back to the early days of his writing career, from his journalistic beginnings at a high school newspaper to his studies at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

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Be remarkable: Jeremy Jackson

February 05, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Fiction Email this article

Marilynne Robinson’s ‘Gilead’ Listed Among President Obama’s Favorite Books

In this New York Times article, "From Books, New President Found Voice," Michiko Kakutani explores President Barack Obama's favored reading matter, "a reading list that shaped a president." Workshop faculty member Marilynne Robinson’s award-winning novel 'Gilead' is included on this honored bookshelf of texts that influenced Obama's world view and his quest for understanding the human condition.

"What’s more, Mr. Obama's love of fiction and poetry — Shakespeare's plays, Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick' and Marilynne Robinson's 'Gilead'...along with the Bible, Lincoln’s collected writings and Emerson's 'Self Reliance' — has not only given him a heightened awareness of language. It has also imbued him with a tragic sense of history and a sense of the ambiguities of the human condition..." Read more

February 03, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Fiction Email this article

John Updike, legendary novelist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Dies at 76

John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who was regarded as one of the greatest writers of life in the postwar prime of the American empire, died today at age 76.

Updike was an extremely prolific author, producing an unprecedented amount of fiction, poetry, nonfiction and critique over his lifetime. He often wrote novels in a series, becoming best known for his acclaimed Rabbit tetralogy, Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990). He won the Pulitzer Prize for both Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest. A rarity among American writers, Updike was a much-esteemed author whose books were best-sellers as well, including Couples (1968), The Witches of Eastwick (1984) and Terrorist (2006). A small collection of Updike's letters, held in the University of Iowa Libraries' Archives, includes correspondences between Updike and his close friend (and then Iowa Writers' Workshop director) John Leggett.

Born on March 18, 1932, in Reading, Pa, Updike began writing at an early age. He later attended Harvard, serving as president of the Harvard Lampoon, before graduating in 1954. He began working at The New Yorker in 1955, continuing to write criticism for the publication for decades. Read more...

January 27, 2009
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NY Times Book Review: Unsworth’s “Land of Marvels”

In this New York Times Sunday Book Review of the latest novel by former Iowa Writers' Workshop visiting faculty member Barry Unsworth, "Land of Marvels," reviewer Christopher de Bellaigue uncovers the book's complex and interconnected themes, revealing aspects of the plot in a rich subtlety: "Unsworth’s 21st-century readers inhabit a third stratum. We read 'Land of Marvels' exquisitely aware that the great American empire entered its own crisis as a result of its occupation of the vast territory where Somerville is digging, to which Unsworth affixes its modern name only when tapping out the book’s last, portentous word: Iraq." Bellaigue also describes the work as "dramatic and richly symbolic" and claims "Unsworth assembles his layers with the subtlety you would expect from a renowned, if restrained, historical novelist and Booker Prize winner."

Unsworth was born in Wingate, a mining village in Durham, England. He graduated from the University of Manchester in 1951. He was a visiting literary fellow at the Universities of Durham and Newcastle, a writer-in-residence at Liverpool University in 1985 and a visiting professor at the University of Iowa's Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times, winning once in 1992 for the novel Sacred Hunger.

January 26, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Fiction Email this article

W.D. Snodgrass, Poet and Pulitzer Prize winner, Dies at Age 83

"W. D. Snodgrass, who found the stuff of poetry in the raw material of his emotional life and from it helped forge a bold, self-analytical poetic style in postwar America, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his debut book, died on Tuesday at his home in Erieville, N.Y., in rural Madison County. He was 83." -- The New York Times

Born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania on Jan. 5, 1926, Snodgrass was known to his friends as 'De'. He attended Geneva College in Pennsylvania with the intention of studying the symphonic timpani before serving in the United States Navy during World War II. In 1949, he graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and stayed in Iowa City afterwards to study with Robert Lowell, John Berryman and Randall Jarrell.

His honors include an Ingram Merrill Foundation award and a special citation from the Poetry Society of America. He has also received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Endowment for the Arts.

His first collection of poetry, Heart's Needle, was published in 1959 and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1960. Since then, he has published numerous books of poetry, including Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions, 2006); The Führer Bunker: The Complete Cycle (1995); Each in His Season (1993); Selected Poems, 1957-1987; The Führer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress (1977) (a collection which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and produced by Wynn Handman for the American Place Theatre) and After Experience (1968).

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The New York Times
The Press Citizen
The Writing University

January 21, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Poetry Email this article

Op-ed: “What writers say about our City of Literature”

In this Iowa City Press-Citizen opinion piece, the editors remark on the benefits of having a culture of writing in Iowa City. They respond to the new designation of 'UNESCO City of Literature' and the decision to name Christopher Merrill, the University of Iowa's International Writing Program Director, 'Press Citizen Person of the Year.'

"Iowa City is a city of writers, and the entire Iowa City area benefits from these literary folk -- professional and amateur -- scribbling away in coffeehouses, in university classrooms and while on-the-clock at their day jobs. Yes, we benefit when they pick up a shovel and help out with the sandbagging as floodwaters rise, but we also benefit when they sit down afterwards and try to make sense of such experiences...

"Back in November, area residents had an opportunity to hear firsthand what many international writers had to say about our community and our nation. As a finale to IWP's 10-week residency, dozens of writers from across the globe gathered in the Iowa City Public Library to discuss their 'Images of America.'" read more...

January 16, 2009
UNESCO Email this article

Rep. Loebsack Honors Iowa City Being Named a City of Literature on U.S. House Floor

Washington, DC – Congressman Dave Loebsack (IA-02) delivered the following statement on the floor of the United States House of Representatives to honor Iowa City, Iowa, for its designation as the world's third 'City of Literature' by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This prestigious designation makes the Iowa City Community part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

“I want to express my sincere congratulations to the City of Iowa City for their designation as a City of Literature by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Iowa City is only the third city to receive such designation in the world and the first in the United States.

“This recognition is well deserved and rightly honors a city which has long been dedicated to literature and the arts. The City of Iowa City alone has produced more than 25 Pulitzer Prize winners in literature since 1955, as well as four recent U.S. Poet Laureates.

“I am proud of all who contributed to Iowa City receiving this designation including Christopher Merrill, the current Director of the University of Iowa International Writing Program. I trust future residents and generations to come will not only recognize the importance of the designation but also continue to carry on the city’s tradition of literary excellence."

To watch the Congressman’s floor speech, click here.

January 08, 2009
UNESCO Email this article

UNESCO City of Literature Photo Gallery Now Online

The newest addition to the UNESCO City of Literature page is a photo gallery showcasing the many facets of the local writing aspects and history. The gallery highlights the varied writing departments and workshops at the University of Iowa, as well as alumni, professors and writers associated with Iowa. Images of Iowa City and the Iowa River are also featured inside this visual tour of our literary legacy.

View the gallery at the UNESCO City of Literature page, or through this direct link.

January 05, 2009
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Fiction | Poetry | Translation | International Writing Program | Irish Writing Program | New Media | Nonfiction Writing Program | Playwrights Workshop | School of Journalism | Summer Writing Festival | UNESCO Email this article

Mark Doty Wins National Book Award

Former Iowa Writers' Workshop instructor Mark Doty recently won a National Book Award for his collection of poetry, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems. The collection has been lauded as solidifying "[Doty's] position as a star of contemporary American poetry…The title poem is a gorgeous meditation on the way that life’s fire infuses the world…The poems combine close attention to the fragile, contingent things of the world with the constant, almost unavoidable chance of transcendence."

Doty is the author of eight books of poems, among them School of the Arts, Source, and My Alexandria. He has also published four volumes of nonfiction prose: Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, Heaven's Coast, Firebird and Dog Years, which was a New York Times bestseller in 2007. He has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, two Lambda Literary Awards and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. He has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill and Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Foundations, and from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The fiction category also included two writers connected to the workshop. Current instructor Marilynne Robinson was nominated for her novel "Home," and workshop alumnus Salvatore Scibona was nominated for his novel "The End."

Read More...

December 09, 2008
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Poetry Email this article

Iowa Alumnus Davis Receives Hopkins Fellowship

Matthew Davis, a graduate of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, recently received a fellowship from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, to study Middle Eastern politics and history, Arabic and International Economics.

Davis graduated from Iowa with an MFA in nonfiction from the Nonfiction Writing Program in spring 2007. He won the 2005 Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Competition in nonfiction and had a notable essay in the 2006 Best American Travel Writing Series. His work has appeared, among other places, in the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Bellevue Literary Review and the Mid-American Review. While at Iowa, he was an Iowa Arts Fellow, a Stanley Fellow and a Writer-in-Residence at the UI Museum of Art.

He currently works with the International Reporting Project and has an essay in River Teeth. Before he attended school in Iowa, Davis lived in Mongolia for three years, a country that is the focus of much of his writing.

December 05, 2008
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UNESCO City of Literature Announcement Ceremony

November 25, 2008

The City of Iowa City and the University of Iowa celebrated the community's City of Literature designation by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in a free public event on Tuesday, Nov. 25, in the Senate Chamber of the Old Capitol on the UI campus.

The event featured Iowa City Mayor Regenia Bailey, UI President Sally Mason and Writing University Chair Christopher Merrill, as well as representatives of, or messages from, the governor's office and the Iowa congressional delegation. A video was shown of poet Marvin Bell, an alumnus and long-time faculty member of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the state's first poet laureate, reading "Writers in a Café," a poem he wrote to accompany the application.

Iowa City has joined Edinburgh, Scotland and Melbourne, Australia as UNESCO Cities of Literature. Other cities in the Creative Cities Network -- honoring and connecting cultural centers for cinema, music, crafts and folk arts, design, media arts and gastronomy, as well as literature -- include Aswan, Egypt; Sante Fe, N.M.; Berlin, Germany; Montreal, Canada; Popayan, Colombia; Bologna, Italy; Shenzhen, China; Kobe, Japan; and Seville, Spain.

Presentations by the Honored Guests >>

• The University of Iowa President Mason's remarks
• Iowa City Mayor Regenia Bailey's speech
• Letters from Senator Tom Harkin, Senator Charles Grassley, Congressman Dave Loebsack
• Remarks from International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill

<< Back to the Iowa City UNESCO main page

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December 02, 2008
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Alarcon Wins PEN Literary Prize for Fiction

PEN USA, the West Coast center for the renowned writers’ organization International PEN, announced this month that Daniel Alarcon won its prestigious 2008 Literary Award for Fiction competition for his novel Lost City Radio. Alarcon, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning magazine published in his native Lima, Peru, and Visting Scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley. He is author of another work of fiction, War by Candlelight (2006 PEN/Hemingway Award Finalist). He has won numerous other prizes, including a Whiting Award (2004), Guggenheim and Lannan Fellowships (2007), and a National Magazine Award (2008).

Alarcon was selected by a distinguished panel of writers, editors and journalists. Past recipients of the Award of Honor and Lifetime Achievement Award include: Jeff Bezos, Robert Shaye, Otis Chandler, HBO, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ray Bradbury, Walter Mosley, Jane Smiley, Kevin Starr, Gloria Steinem, Robert Towne, Gore Vidal, and Billy Wilder.

Listen >> Alarcon reads from "Lost City Radio"
Read >> PEN Literary Awards Announcement

December 01, 2008
Iowa Writers' Workshop | Fiction Email this article

Nam Le Wins Dylan Thomas Prize

The second winner of the largest literary prize for a writer under the age of 30 was announced this month -- Nam Le, author of the The Boat, claimed the Dylan Thomas Prize from the shortlisted group of outstanding young writers.

"Nam tackles his own background and circumstances as well as that of others with a clear eye, focused intelligence and wonderful use of words," Peter Florence, the chairman of the judges, said. "He is, in this panel's opinion, a phenomenal literary talent, and I look forward to following his career as it progresses."

Nam Le was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has received the Pushcart Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the University of East Anglia. His fiction has appeared in venues including Zoetrope: All-Story, A Public Space, Conjunctions, One Story, NPR's Selected Shorts, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading, Best New American Voices, Best Australian Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthologies. He is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review.

Read more...

November 24, 2008
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Marvin Bell — “Writers in a Café”

View the Letterpress Broadside of Marvin Bell's "Writers in a Cafe"

Video by John Campbell
Internet Explorer users: click video twice to play

<< Back to the Iowa City UNESCO page

November 20, 2008
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UNESCO designates Iowa City as the world’s third City of Literature

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated Iowa City, Iowa, the world's third City of Literature, making it part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

"This is at once a celebration of the literary riches and resources of Iowa City and a spur to action," said University of Iowa International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill, who led the UI Writing University committee that submitted the city's proposal. "We look forward to working with our new partners in the Creative Cities network -- to forging dynamic relationships with writers, artists and others committed to the life of discovery. This is a great day for Iowa City."

Iowa City joins Edinburgh, Scotland, and Melbourne, Australia, as UNESCO Cities of Literature. Other cities in the Creative Cities Network -- honoring and connecting cultural centers for cinema, music, crafts and folk arts, design, media arts and gastronomy, as well as literature -- include Aswan, Egypt; Santa Fe, N.M.; Berlin, Germany; Montreal, Canada; Popayan, Colombia; Bologna, Italy; Shenzhen, China; and Seville, Spain. The Writing University taskforce was launched by former UI Provost Michael Hogan to embrace and celebrate the UI’s stature as a literary center, and to provide enhanced opportunities for coordination and cooperation among UI literary programs.

The catalyst for the UI’s literary activity was the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the first creative-writing degree program anywhere and the blueprint for many of the creative writing programs that now thrive on campuses worldwide. The stature of the program was recently enhanced when two poets connected to the workshop shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize and International Writing Program veteran Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize.

Read more...

Iowa Writers' Workshop | Cinema & Comparative Literature | Fiction | Poetry | Nonfiction | Translation | International Writing Program | Nonfiction Writing Program | Playwrights Workshop | School of Journalism | Summer Writing Festival | UNESCO Email this article

Launch of eXchanges Fall Issue

eXchanges, the University of Iowa's online journal of literary translation, will celebrate the launch of its new Fall issue, Roots & Branches, in Shambaugh House on Thursday, Nov. 20 at 8 p.m. Join the editors of the journal for refreshments and fine literature as local translators Puja Birla, Emily Goedde, and Diana Thow read from their contributions to the issue.

Other contributors to the issue include Kristof Magnusson, a 2008 International Writing Program participant, and Michelle Gil-Montero, who completed her MFA as a poet in the Writers' Workshop in 2007.

These and other translators interact with the issue's theme, Roots & Branches, in intriguing and provocative ways with their translations of prose and poetry from French, Spanish, Chinese, German, Italian, Hindi, Icelandic and Japanese.

The issue will be available on Nov. 20 at http://www.uiowa.edu/~xchanges/.

November 18, 2008
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UNESCO City of Literature

ARTICLES & PRESS

UI News Services >> UNESCO designates Iowa City as the world's third City of Literature

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated Iowa City, Iowa, the world's third City of Literature, making the community part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. Read more...

Press Citizen >> Iowa City earns 'City of Literature' distinction

Melbourne, Edinburgh…Iowa City? The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, has designated Iowa City as the world’s third City of Literature. It is the first American city to be awarded with the distinction. Read more...

The Gazette >> UNESCO names I.C. City of Literature

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated Iowa City the world's third City of Literature, making the community part of the Creative Cities Network. Read more...

The Daily Iowan >> Iowa City named world's third City of Literature

No other city in the United States has what Iowa City has. It has been named the world's third City of Literature by the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, joining Edinburgh, Scotland, and Melbourne, Australia. Read more...

November 17, 2008
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IWP Alumnus Rapola Awarded Noma Prize

The South African novelist Zachariah Rapola (IWP, '00) is the recipient of the 2008 Noma Prize, awarded by the prominent Japanese Kodansha House to an African work published in Africa, for his collection Beginnings of Dream.

The book has been described as "a strikingly original collection" focusing on "the interior world of its characters". Rapola is a freelance writer and filmmaker born and raised in Alexandra, Johannesburg.

The National Arts Council of South Africa awarded him a fellowship to the University of Iowa International Writing Program in 2000. In 2001 his widely acclaimed youth novel Stanza on the Edge was published, and he is currently developing a television series based on the novel. His short stories and poetry have been published in magazines and anthologies, and he has also written for a BBC/SABC comedy series.

November 13, 2008
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Two IWP Alumni Short-Listed for Man Asian Literature Award

The distinguished Man Asian Literature Award recently announced its short-list for the 2008 prize. The list featured two IWP alumni: the Indian novelist Kavery Nambisan (IWP 07) for The Story That Must Not Be Told, and the Chinese novelist Yu Hua (IWP 03) for Brothers.

Nambisan's The Story That Must not Be Told, is a novel about Simon Jesukumar, an ageing widower who lives in a housing colony in Madras. Kavery Nambisan has devoted most of her working life to practice in rural India and has worked as a surgeon in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. She is the author of several novels which have earned tremendous critical acclaim; Mango Coloured Fish, The Scent of Pepper, The Hills of Angheri, The Truth (Almost) About Bharat, On Wings of Butterflies, and several children’s books.

Hua's Brothers is a big, spirited comedy of society running amok in modern China. Yu Hua was born in 1960 in Zhejiang, China. He has published four novels, six collections of stories, and three collections of essays. In 2002 Yu Hua became the first Chinese writer to win the prestigious James Joyce Foundation Award. His novel To Live was awarded the Premio Grinzane Cavour (1998), and To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant were named two of the last decade's ten most influential books in China.

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November 10, 2008
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Announcing the New Issue of The Iowa Review, Fall 2008

The new Fall 2008 issue of The Iowa Review has been released, featuring a variety of fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

In this edition, readers will find Kirstin Allio's story about a nanny with a precocious charge and a mysterious past; Alex Epstein's brief considerations of solved crossword puzzles and Jung's nightmares; twisted poetic "valentines" courtesy of Writers' Workshop graduate Kiki Petrosino; a marriage proposal from graphic memoirist Maggie McKnight; and the understatement of the year by one of fiction writer Steven Patterson's laconic cowboys. Other contributors, such as former IWP participants such as Kei Miller and Elena Bossi, share their poetry and prose.

Visit The Iowa Review website to find out more.

November 07, 2008
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New Issue of POROI Journal Released

With the newest issue of the POROI Journal, Thomas Shevory returns to analyze responses in popular music to the U.S. war in Iraq. Linda Beail debuts with a film take on One True Thing, a mother-daughter movie starring Meryl Streep.

In addition, a Poroi Symposium on Rhetorics of Political Humor explores how America’s funny bone engages its elections. Russell Peterson assesses how late-night comedians can undermine presidents, potential replacements, and other politicians. Then G. R. Boynton and John Nelson trace how humor migrated from presidential to senatorial campaign spots in elections leading to the one now underway.

Read the new issue here >> POROI Journal

October 28, 2008
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Interactive World Map Features IWP Writers

The Daily Iowan has released an interactive world map that includes profiles and videos of the participants of the International Writing Program's 2008 residency. The map, set to evolve as new stories are added, invites readers to scroll over interactive buttons representing hometowns of select writers. Click on the buttons to view video, read interviews and learn more about the writer's work.

Interactive Feature >> Map: 'Out of the Labyrinths of the World'

October 22, 2008
Fiction | International Writing Program Email this article

Robinson and Scibona Receive National Book Award Nomination

Robinson at the Iowa Writers' Workshop

Marilynne Robinson and Salvatore Scibona have both received National Book Award nominations. Robinson was nominated for Home, a companion novel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead. Scibona was chosen for his debut novel about immigration and family loyalties, The End.

Marilynne Robinson, whose writing has been described as "beautiful, shimmering, precise," is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Housekeeping (FSG, 1980). She has also authored two books of nonfiction, Mother Country (FSG, 1989) and The Death of Adam. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Winners of the National Book Award, each of whom receive $10,000, will be announced Nov. 19.

Salvatore Scibona is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His fiction has been published in the Threepenny Review, Best New American Voices 2004, and The Pushcart Book of Short Stories: The Best Stories from a Quarter-Century of the Pushcart Prize. This is his first book.

Listen: Marilynne Robinson on NPR

October 17, 2008
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National Book Foundation Selects Workshop Alumni for “5 Under 35”

Sana Krasikov (MFA, 2005) and Nam Le (MFA, 2006) are two of the five young fiction writers to be honored at the National Book Foundation's “5 Under 35” celebration in November. The writers were each selected by a previous National Book Award Finalist or Winner as someone whose work is particularly promising and exciting and is among the best of a new generation of writers.

Sana Krasikov's One More Year: Stories was selected by Francine Prose, the 2000 Fiction Finalist for Blue Angel. Gaiutra Bahadur reviewed One More Year for The New York Times, observing, "Krasikov's cast of exiles, refugees and repatriates are . . . people moving in and out of love—or what passes for it. She has written a sensitive book about the economics of relationships: how they can become subtle transactions by people trying to pull off the trick of occupying more than one place and more than one time."

Nam Le's collection of stories, The Boat, was chosen by Mary Gaitskill, 2005 Fiction Finalist for Veronica, who wrote, "Nam Le is extraordinary. His editor remarked to me that he ‘must be heard’; I would add that he will be heard, that The Boat will be read for as long as people read books. Its vision and its power are timeless."

October 16, 2008
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IWP Participants Join Poetry & Jazz in Pittsburgh

Poets Maryam Ala Amjadi (Iran), Rogelio Saunders (Cuba) and Nikola Madzirov (Macedonia), all current residents in the International Writing Program, participated in the recent Jazz Poetry Concert in Pittsburgh. The poets teamed up with jazz sax player Oliver Lake and his quintet and the Flux Quartet to create a night that evoked "a tighter focus on the poetry and a more intimate relationship with the music in the crowded auditorium."

"I've never read my poems that way before," Madzirov said. "It was a totally new thing for me." The event's theme was centered around the question "What Is Home?" and featured many international and regional writers, including former US Poet Laureate Gerald Stern. Read more....

Biographies >> About the authors
Media Center >> Video

October 01, 2008
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Robert Hass Awarded UI Honorary Degree

In appreciation of his work with the Iowa Writers' Workshop and his dedication to Iowa City, the University of Iowa Honorary Degree Committee awarded Robert Hass an honorary UI degree last week. The award-winning poet has been a part of the university and the culture of Iowa City for several years, participating in the literary activites of Iowa City in many capacities -- from visiting professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop to frequent guest speaker and reader.

Hass' honors and awards include the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for his first collection, Field Guide, and the Pulitzer Prize for his 2008 collection, Time and Materials. He has also served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1995 to 1997.

"Coming and getting to read at the Writers' Workshop was very exciting - it's such a famous place," Hass said. "My wife and I have really fallen in love with Iowa City."

Read >> Literary legend Hass awarded UI Honorary Degree

September 29, 2008
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Sebastian Barry shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Irish poet, playwright, and novelist Sebastian Barry -- a former resident in the International Writing Program -- was recently shortlisted, among five other writers, for the 2008 Man Booker Prize in Fiction. Barry was selected for his novel The Secret Scripture, which has been described as "exquisitely written, it is the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope." The Man Booker Prize is the top literary prize in the English speaking world outside of the United States. Read the official announcement on the Man Booker Prize website.

Read >> Excerpt from The Secret Scripture

A 1987 participant in the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, Sebastian Barry plays include Boss Grady’s Boys (1988), The Steward of Christendom (1995), Our Lady of Sligo (1998) and The Pride of Parnell Street (2007). His novels include The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998), Annie Dunne (2002) and A Long Long Way (2005). He has won, among other awards, the Irish-America Fund Literary Award, the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Prize, the London Critics Circle Award and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize.

September 23, 2008
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Review: Linda Gregg’s “All of It Singing: Poems”

"I did not cry as much in the darkness / as I will when we part in the dimness / near the opening which is the way in for you / and was the way out for me, my love."

In this Los Angeles Times review of Linda Gregg's newest collection, All of It Singing: Poems, reviewer Dana Goodyear explores the subtle and intricate ways that Gregg weaves Orpheus and Eurydice into her work:

"The Orpheus story is a touchstone for Gregg...Eurydice is a figure of indeterminacy and in-betweenness, and her lighting cues -- dimness, 'nearly night,' violet-colored dark -- dramatize Gregg's poems."

"'Eurydice,' a beautiful early poem, portrays the young woman, all-knowing, at the moment she and Orpheus are about to leave what she describes as 'the strange world where I live.' She understands already that she won't go back to the real world..."

'All of It Singing: Poems' -- by Linda Gregg

More on Linda Gregg >>

Linda Gregg was born in Suffern, New York, and grew up in Marin County, California. She has taught as a faculty member at the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop, Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton University.

She published her first book of poems, Too Bright to See, in 1981. Other publication include In the Middle Distance (Graywolf Press, 2006), Things and Flesh (1999), Chosen by the Lion (1994), The Sacraments of Desire (1991), Alma (1985) and Eight Poems (1982). Her latest collection is All of It Singing: Poems.

September 19, 2008
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Events: Truman Capote Award Ceremony in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber

The Long Life

This Thursday, Sept. 18, Helen Small will accept the 2008 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin and speak about issues in literary criticism in a free, public event at 4 p.m. in the Senate Chamber of the Old Capitol on the University of Iowa campus. A reception of food and beverages will follow.

Small's "The Long Life," published in the fall of 2007 by Oxford University Press, was selected for the $30,000 Capote Award, the largest annual cash prize for literary criticism in the English language. The award is administered for the Truman Capote Estate by the UI Writers' Workshop.

The Truman Capote Estate announced the establishment of the Truman Capote Literary Trust in 1994. In addition to the administration of the literary criticism award, the Iowa Writers' Workshop involvement with the trust includes awarding Truman Capote Fellowships to UI students in creative writing.

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Small will accept Capote Award in Sept. 18 event

September 15, 2008
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Untitled

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ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Martín Rejtman (Argentina) studied film at New York University. Before directing his first feature film, he worked on several productions as an assistant director and made two short films: Doli vuelve a casa (1984-2004) and Sitting on a Suitcase (1986). Full-length features on which he served as director and screenwriter include Rapado (1992), Silvia Prieto (1999), Los guantes magicos (2003), and Copacabana (2006), and they have won awards from Fipresci (the International Film Critics Federation) and the Three Continents, Valdivia, and FICCO film festivals, among others. In addition to filmmaking, he has written books that have been published in Argentina and Europe. They include Rapado (Planeta, 1992), Treinta y cuatro historias (included in Un libro sobre Kuitca, 1993), Velcro y yo (Planeta, 1996), and Literatura y otros cuentos (Interzona, 2005). In 2000 he was a resident at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, and in 2002 he received a fellowship from Argentina’s Fundación Antorchas.

Translated from the Spanish by Leah Leone and Andrea Strane.

September 05, 2008
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The Big Question

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Mike Finn (Ireland) is an actor and playwright and an Honorary Fellow of the University of Iowa. He is noted for producing locally popular plays on Limerick history. His best known play, Pigtown (1999), covers the forgotten moments in 20th-century Limerick history from the point of view of a dying man. Mike Finn's other plays include The Crunch (1992), Charlie Chaplin's Mother Was An Irish Man (1995) (both co-written with Terry Devlin), The Quiet Moment (2002) (read in London, March 06), Shock and Awe (2003), Ellis Island (2003) and ONE (2006). He also writes the Irish television sitcom Killinaskully for Pat Shortt Productions.

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Self Immolation

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Zhang Xian (China) started his career as one of the first independent Chinese playwrights in the post-Mao era. During this period he produced most of his work underground. He now is a well-known playwright, screenwriter, director, and activist in the fields of theatre and film. His theatre works have been performed in China, Europe, and America. The first dance-theatre performance he directed won the ZKB Patronage Prize at Zurich’s Zuercher Theater Spektakel 2006. He wrote the screenplays for the films Those Left Behind, which won the Golden Pyramid Award at the 16th Cairo International Film Festival, and Jasmine Flower, which won the jury prize at the 7th Shanghai International Film Festival. Zhang also initiated the independent drama group Z and the dance-theatre group Zuhe Niao, and was one of the founders of the Hard Han Café Theatre and of Down Stream Garage, which is the first nonprofit art and performance space in Shanghai. He works as curator and organizer of various non-governmental art festivals in Shanghai.

Translated from the Chinese by Guo Li and Benjamin Read.

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State of the Union

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ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Charles Mulekwa (Uganda) has been practicing theater in different roles since 1983, and worked at the National Theatre from 1992 to 2003. He has been involved in many cultural exchange projects, and has gained international exposure through his work in Europe, the United States, and Africa. He attended the Royal Court Theatre, Royal National Theatre, Sundance Theatre Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, and the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, and worked on a number of radio plays with BBC. In 1998, the British Council and the Peggy Ramsay Foundation granted him a joint scholarship for an MA in Playwriting at Birmingham University, where he wrote the play A Time of Fire. In 2003 he earned a Ford Foundation International Fellowship and joined Brown University, where he is a PhD candidate of Theatre and Performance Studies.  In 2005 he served as the Ugandan consultant to the director of the movie The Last King of Scotland.  He is currently working on his thesis, Performing the Legacy of War in Uganda.

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Our Town

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Lisa Schlesinger’s (United States) stage and radio plays include Wal-martyrs, Celestial Bodies, Twenty One Positions (with Naomi Wallace and Abed Abu Srour), Same Egg, Manny and Chicken, Rock Ends Ahead, The Bones of Danny Winston, Bow Echo, The Artist of Transparency, and Iphigenia at Zero. She is currently working on an opera, Harmonicus Mundi. She has received commissions from the Guthrie Theatre, the BBC, Portland Stage Company and Ensemble Studio Theatre and fellowships from the NEA, CEC International, the Iowa Arts Council, the Ford and Sloan Foundations. She is a recipient of the NEA/TCG Playwrights Residency Award and winner of the BBC International Playwriting Competition. Her most recent essay, “Postcards from Gaza and Other Unspeakable Geographies,” is forthcoming in Out of Silence, edited by Caridad Svich. She is professor of playwriting at Columbia College Chicago.

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One Short Sleepe

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Naomi Wallace (United States) has had work produced in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. Her major plays include One Flea Spare, In the Heart of America, Slaughter City, The Inland Sea, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Birdy (an adaptation of William Wharton's novel) and The Fever Chart: Three Short Visions of the Middle East. Her work has received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Kesselring Prize, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, and an Obie. She is also a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship. Her award-winning film Lawn Dogs is available on DVD. She is presently working on a commission for Actor's Theatre of Louisville and Clean Break of London. Her new play Things of Dry Hours will receive its New York premiere at New York Theatre Workshop in June 2008. Her new film, The War Boys, based on her play of the same title, and co-written with Bruce Mcleod, will be out in 2008.

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The Fortune Teller

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Chista Yasrebi (Iran) is a playwright, novelist, poet, short story writer, theatre director, and critic.

Translated from the Farsi by Sholeh Wolpé.

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Imperfect Family Recipes

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Verena Tay (Singapore) has spent the last two decades working in Singapore’s English-language theatre. Since 1997, she has concentrated on solo performances. Some of her recent projects include Cotton & Jade (2000), Medea: One on One (2002), 3 Women (2005) and Between Woman and Man: The Erasure of Verena Tay (2007).  Another of her plays,The Car, won Action Theatre’s Theatre Idols in 2005; The Car was fully staged at The Esplanade Theatre Studio in 2006).  Tay teaches voice, speech, and presentation skills in Singapore.

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Great News

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Hana Andronikova (Czech Republic) is a widely-published Czech prose writer. She received the Magnesia Litera Award in 2002 for her first novel, Zvuk slunecnich hodin (The Sound of the Sundial, 2001) and went on to author a collection of short stories, Srdce na udici (Heart on a Hook, 2002). Her fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in Europe and the U.S., including World Literature Today.  Currently, she works as an independent consultant in Prague.

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Discovery Channel

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Vivienne Plumb (New Zealand) is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and playwright. She has published four collections of poetry, a novel, a novella, two playscripts, and a collection of short fiction. Her work also appears in numerous New Zealand anthologies. Her new play, “The Cape,” recently received its first production at Circa Theatre in Wellington and has three more productions planned for 2008. Last year she held the 2006 writer-in-residence position at Massey University, and was made an Honorary Fellow at Hong Kong Baptist University where she also held a 2006 residency. This year she has held the inaugural writer-in-residence position in Rotorua, the iconic geothermal centre of New Zealand, also known as Sulphur City. Some of her poetry appears in “White Fungus,” an underground New Zealand magazine that will now be available in North America.

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Delivery with a New York Accent

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Maxim Kurochkin (Russia) is a playwright who was a resident at the International Writing Program in 2004.

Translated from the Russian by Russell Valentino and Irina Kostina

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Concerto

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Edward Carey (United Kingdom) is a novelist, playwright and illustrator. His plays have been performed in London (BAC, Young Vic Studio) and with the National Theatre of Romania and with the Small State Theatre of Vilnius, Lithuania. He has also worked with the puppet company Faulty Optic (Royal Opera House Studio) and with Dollah Baju Merrah, the leading shadow puppet master of Malaysia. He has written two novels, Observatory Mansions and Alva & Irva, which have been published in 13 countries. He is currently working on his third novel.

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Breaking the Ice

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Pascal Mugarra (Uganda) received a Bachelor’s of Education from Makerere University in Kampala, and has studied at the universities of Clermont Ferrand (France), Le Tampon (Réunion), and Bujumbura (Burundi). He was a resident of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 2000. His first novel, "Cherished Dreams," was published by Macmillan, London, in 1994. He has written several plays, among them A Dog's Life and The Lion of Zabuku. He is currently teaching Modern Languages at Castle View School in the UK.

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Marriage Reform

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Natalya Vorozhbit was born in Kiev in the Ukraine and studied at the Moscow Literary Institute. Two of her plays, Demons and Galka Motalka, have been staged in Moscow and in the National Theatre of Latvia. Galka Motalka has been adapted for screen and is currently being filmed in Moscow. (NOTE: A version of Galka Motalka is on the IWP Web site.)

Another play, The Khomenko Family Chronicles, was commissioned jointly by the Royal Court (UK) and the BBC World Service. It was first performed as a rehearsed reading as part of Small Talk: Big Picture at the Royal Court in 2006. It was then staged as part of the Royal Court’s International Season in Winter 2007 in a double bill with The Good Family by Joakim Pirinen.

Her play, The Grain Store, written as the result of a commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company, will be staged in The Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2009.

Translated from the Russian by Russell Valentino and Irina Kostina.

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A Union of Sorts

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Kiran Nagarkar (India) is a widely-read bilingual author in contemporary Indian literature, working in both English and Marathi. His novels and screenplays have been well received in India, England, Germany, and the U.S., leading to a Rockefeller Fellowship, the 2000 Sahitya Akademi Award for Best Novel (Cuckold, 1997), and a City of Munich Fellowship. Nagarkar’s latest novel in English, God’s Little Soldier (2006), has been translated into German, with French, Italian and Spanish translations forthcoming.

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The IWP’s 40th Anniversary 24 Hour ‘Global Play’

“All The World’s A Page: The Global Play Project” was commissioned by the International Writing Program in 2007 to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Fifteen playwrights from around the world, most of them IWP alumni or residents, were given 24 hours to write a scene around the theme of “union.” The University of Iowa’s Theatre Department then had another 36 hours to translate, cast, and stage the play before it made its debut on October 10, 2007. The result was thrilling, magical, and unprecedented. View the individual scenes below.

Click on the thumbnails to view the videos

Introduction 1:30	1. A Union of Sorts Kiran Nagakar | 7:39	2. Marriage Reform Natalya Vorozhbit | 9:40	3. The Discovery Channel Vivienne Plumb | 8:13
4. Untitled Martin Rejtman | 4:25	5. Great News Hana Andronikova | 6:08	6. The Big Question Mike Finn | 10:39	7. Breaking the Ice Pascal A. Mugarra | 5:22
8. Imperfect Family Recipes Verena Tay | 7:26	9. State of the Union Charles Mulekwa | 2:46	10. Our () Town Lisa Schlesinger | 8:56	11. Concerto Edward Carey | 7:06
12. Delivery with a New York Accent Maxim Kurochkin | 8:56	13. One Short Sleepe Naomi Wallace | 9:57	14. Self Immolation Zhang Xian | 10:37	15. Fortune Teller Chista Yasrebi | 10:00