^[1] O’Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being: letters edited and with and introduction by Sally Fitzgerald. New York – Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1979: 3-5
^[2] O’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners. Occasional Prose selected & edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. New York – Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969: p. 84
^[3] Gooch, Brad. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor. New York – Little, Brown and Co, 2009
^[4] O’Connor, Flannery. The Habit of Being. Letters edited and with an introduction by Sally Fitzgerald. New York – Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1979. To “A,” July 5, 1958: 290-91

Second Life Readings Presented by the UI Grad College and IWP

Alice Pung is nearly 10,000 miles away from home as an International Writing Program participant at the University of Iowa.

But through Second Life (a 3-D virtual world where users can socialize, customize an avatar, connect and create using free voice and text chats) friends and family in her native Melbourne, Australia, had the opportunity to hear her read from her memoir, "Unpolished Gem" on Oct. 21.

Students in the UI's School of Library of Information Science (SLIS) graduate program developed avatars -- characters that you can personalize and use when interacting with friends online -- for themselves and the writers, and coordinated the readings with the avatars at the main library.

SLIS students will be hosting another Second Life presentation at 2 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, with IWP participants Yasser Abdel Latif of Egypt and Maxine Case of South Africa reading from their work. Representatives of the UI's Virtual Writing University are helping produce the events.
Read more...

UI Press Marks 150th Anniversary of ‘Leaves of Grass’ with Facsimile Edition

The University of Iowa Press will release "Leaves of Grass, 1860: The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition" this autumn in honor of the 150th Anniversary of the collection's publication. This anniversary edition will include not only a facsimile reproduction of the original 1860 volume but also an introduction by antebellum historian and Whitman scholar Jason Stacy -- a faculty member at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville -- that situates Whitman in 19th-century America as well as annotations that provide detailed historical context for Whitman's poems.

The book is part of the ongoing Iowa Whitman Series that celebrates and explores his influence on modern and contemporary writers in America and around the world. Robert Roper, author of "Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War," wrote, "The University of Iowa Press continues its indispensable service to Whitman scholarship with this new edition of the 1860 'Leaves of Grass.' Jason Stacy refrains from calling the 1860 edition the greatest of all the editions that Whitman published in his lifetime, so we will have to do it for him: Those that came before were smaller, while those that came after represent fallings-away from this towering and encompassing enchantment, the greatest book yet from an American poet." read more...

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.

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)

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.

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.

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"

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.

Read more...

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."

Read more...

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.

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...

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...

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.
----------------------------------

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...

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

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...

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...

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.

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.

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.

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...

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...

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.

‘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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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...

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...

‘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.

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"

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/

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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

‘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

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.

Read more:
Be remarkable: Jeremy Jackson

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

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...

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.

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).

---

The New York Times
The Press Citizen
The Writing University

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...

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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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...

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 >> "History of the Writers' Workshop and the IWP" | May 13, 2008

"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 >> "Brief History of the IWP" | January 01, 1999

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 >> "Poets Against the War Reading" | November 09, 2005

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 >> "Yiyun Li" | September 03, 2004

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.

<< Back to the Iowa City UNESCO main page

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...

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/.

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.

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.

Read More...

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.

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

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'

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

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."

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

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

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.

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.

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.

More Information>>
Small will accept Capote Award in Sept. 18 event

Iowa Writers’ Workshop Alumni Win First Book Poetry Awards

Jonathan Thirkield

Jonathan Thirkield and Arda Collins, recent graduates of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, have just been awarded prestigious first-book prizes. Thirkield's collection "The Waker's Corridor" won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Arda Collins' "It Is Daylight" won 2008 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.

Collin's collection was selected by judge Louise Glück and will be published by Yale University Press in 2009. Collins' poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, the American Poetry Review, A Public Space, jubilat and the Canarium. A 2004 graduate of the Writers' Workshop, where she was a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow, she is an editor of the online poetry journal GutCult.

Thirkield was a Truman Capote Fellow at the workshop and graduated in 2003. His collection was selected by Linda Bierds for the 2008 Walt Whitman Award, presented by the Academy of American Poets. His poems have appeared in WebConjunctions, New American Writing, the Colorado Review, 1913: a journal of forms, American Letters & Commentary, Verse and other journals.

Ayurzana Gunaajav reading

IWP 40th Anniversary Celebration Archives

Sunday, October 7th >> Prairie Lights Reading: Weissbort, Yankelevich, Judd

Poets and translators Daniel Weissbort and Matvei Yankelevich read from their work along with Michael Judd, a poet and Writers’ Workshop student.
7pm | Prairie Lights Bookstore.

Monday, October 8th >> Panel: World Lit Net: Writing in the Age of Global Communication

Editors and writers (Matvei Yankelevich, Michael Orthofer, Chad Post, Cris Mattison, Dedi Felman, and Eliot Weinberger; Russell Valentino and Nataša Durovičová, moderators) discuss the value of the Internet as a tool of dissemination, a locus of literary community, and a potential engine for (or roadblock to) “world literature.” 12pm | Adler Journalism Building

Tuesday, October 9th >> Russian-Language Reading

Open World participants Maria Galina, Leonid Kostyukov, Vladimir Sovetov, and Ekaterina Taratuta read from their work in this bilingual event.
12pm
Shambaugh House

Tuesday, October 9th >>Reading: Eliot Weinberger, Kiran Nagarkar

Poet and essayist Weinberger and Indian novelist and IWP 2007 resident Nagarkar read from their work.
8pm
Shambaugh House

Wed., October 10th >> Panel: The Business of Arabic-Language Literature

IWP 2007 residents Hamdy el-Gazzar (Egypt), Khaled Khalifa (Syria) and Aziz Shakir (Bulgaria) discuss the business of Arabic-language writing and literature. Moderated by Ahmed Kanna, a UI postdoctoral fellow specializing in Middle East studies. 12pm | Iowa City Public Library

Wed., October 10th >> Spanish-Language Reading

This bilingual reading, hosted by Roberto Ampuero (IWP ’96, Chile), features UI assistant professor Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez, local journalist Oscar Argueta, and IWP 2007 residents Elena Bossi (Argentina) and Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti).
4pm | Shambaugh House

Wednesday, October 10th >> Reception and Retrospective: 40 Years of the IWP

Guests, including IWP founder Hualing Engle, IWP director Chris Merrill, Daniel Weissbort, Stavros Deligiorgis, and Peter Nazareth share their memories of the IWP.
5:30pm | The University of Iowa Museum of Art

Friday, October 12th >> Tomaž Šalamun Q&A

Slovenian poet and Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Šalamun (IWP ’71) answers questions from the audience.
11:00am
Frank Conroy Room, Dey House

Friday, October 12th >> Panel: Cultural Diplomacy: The Writer and the World

Discussion of the roles writers and their advocates play in increasing understanding between cultures. Panelists scheduled to appear include Richard Arndt, author of "First Resort of Kings: US Cultural Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century," former Congressman James Leach, UI professor of English Harry Stecopoulos, and IWP 2007 resident Kavery Nambisan (India).
4:00pm | Senate Chambers, Old Capitol Museum

Friday, October 12th >> Paul Engle Memorial Reading

Slovenian poet and Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor Tomaž Šalamun (IWP ’71) delivers the Paul Engle Memorial Reading.
8:00pm | Shambaugh Auditorium

Introducing the Writers of the IWP

Thien

As writers from around the world begin to arrive at The University of Iowa to participate in the International Writing Program three month residency, the UI home page will be featuring spotlights on a few writers to provide brief introductions. Today the featured writer is Madeleine Thien, a Canadian-born daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants, whose short story collections and novels have been the recipients of several awards.

Read more about Madeleine Thien in this UI home page special >> Meet the IWP Writers-in-Residence

Walt Whitman Archive Receives NHPRC Grants

The Walt Whitman Archive is an electronic research and teaching tool co-directed by University of Iowa faculty member Ed Folsom. Recently, the archive received grants to edit Walt Whitman's Civil War writings. Funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) will support editorial work on Whitman's incoming and outgoing correspondence. Funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) will support editorial work on Whitman's Civil War notebooks, daybooks, literary essays, journalism, poetry manuscripts and the so-called Blue Book (a personally annotated copy of Leaves of Grass that cost him his government job). Ken Price, Folsom's co-director, has received an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Digital Innovation Award to support his role in these editorial efforts.

‘Between the Lines’ Middle-Eastern Residency Finds Haven in Chicago

Between the Lines in Chicago

When the 2008 floods hit Iowa City this June, many University of Iowa programs and departments were suddenly without a home. One of these displacements was the International Writing Program's pilot project 'Between the Lines,' a residency program which sought to bring 12 young writers from Arabic-speaking countries, aged 16-19, to the University of Iowa for a two-week writing workshop. With university buildings closing due to the flood, and the visiting writers already on planes and on their way to Iowa City, IWP staff worked quickly to relocate the accommodations and locations for the entire event. They eventually found safe harbor at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Read more >> Flooding forced UI writing programs to become improvisational artists

Also, the visiting writers describe their time in the United States and remark on the cultural, social and educational benefits of the program in this University of Illinois at Chicago article.

Read >> Middle Eastern teens diverted by floods, taken in by Hull-House

Kathyrn Harrison reviews Natsuo Kirino in the New York Times Sunday Book Review

Kirino

Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Kathryn Harrison explores Natsuo Kirino’s "disquieting and suspenseful" novel Real World in this edition of the New York Times Sunday Book Review. "From a writer who has declared Flannery O’Connor her favorite American author — one of the few whose obsessive focus on violence, epiphany and redemption equals Dostoyevsky’s — readers can expect a tour through the grotesque and the extreme," Harrison writes of Kirino and her new work.
Read the Review >> "Killer Children"

Kathryn Harrison, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, is the bestselling author of the memoir The Kiss. Her most recent book is While They Slept: An Inquiry In to the Murder of a Family. Read the NYT Review of Harrison's While They Slept here >> "Speaking the Unspeakable"

Natsuo Kirino is a Japanese novelist most famous for her 1997 novel, Out, which received the Grand Prix for Crime Fiction, Japan's top mystery award, and was a finalist (in English translation) for the 2004 Edgar Award. Real World and What Remains are her two latest novels translated into English.

News from the International Writing Program: Alumni Awards

Mo Yan's novel

The largest award for a Chinese novel, given annually by the Hong Kong Baptist University, went this year to International Writing Program (IWP) alum Mo Yan for Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out. Translated by Howard Goldblatt, it was published in March 2008 by Arcade Books.

In other award news, IWP alum Niyi Osundare has won this year’s Tchcaya U Tamsi Award for African Poetry. The prize, debuted in 1989, is named after Tchicaya U Tam’si, one of the Africa’s best poets. The prize is worth $10,000 -- the highest for the literary genre in Africa. Osundare was chosen as the 2008 laureate by the organizers of the award, The Assilah Forum Foundation.

UI’s Peter Nazareth Remembers IWP alum Cyprian Ekwensi

Nazareth

"The first thing that struck me about Ekwensi was his stature. Physically: he was tall, slim, and had a forceful and direct voice. He was someone who knew exactly what he was doing. But what was this figure from the past doing now in the IWP?" Peter Nazareth first met Nigerian writer Cyprian Ekwensi in the University of Iowa's International Writing Program (IWP) in the fall of 1974. Nazareth, now the IWP's Adviser to Foreign Writers and a UI professor, relates the story of their time together at the IWP and describes the scope of Ekwensi's influence on him in the following memoir:

I took my final exams in English Honours at Makerere University College early in 1962, while Uganda was in its last year as a British Protectorate. In those days, a good degree was considered to be an Upper Second. But nobody from the first two years—I was in the third batch of English Honours students—achieved that kind of degree. Even the most brilliant of them, the one we all looked up to, Jonathan Kariara, received a Lower Second. I decided to test myself by sitting in the library and doing old exams. Walking out of the library, I bumped into Murray Carlin, one of my favorite professors, and I asked him if he would mark those exams I had done. On the basis of his marking and his comments (I received Cs), I thought that these exams required not book learning but strategy. I planned on answering one question brilliantly, one well, and one not quite complete and giving the impression of being hurried for lack of time—so my true worth would be judged by the best. After taking the exams, I decided to pass on my strategy to the most brilliant of them all, two years behind me, James Ngugi (as he then was). We met outside the canteen, which was halfway between our two halls of residence. I told him how to pass exams well (!) and he reciprocated by introducing me to the African writers he had read on his own.

While waiting for my results and teaching at St. Mary’s College, Kisubi, I read all the African writers Ngugi had recommended. Among them was Cyprian Ekwensi's Jagua Nana. It was a striking novel whose protagonist became part of my memory even though I did not re-read the novel for several years.

I also read the few critics of African literature there were at the time, and as the years went by other critics, who joined these few in finding fault with Ekwensi, comparing him unfavorably to Achebe, implying or stating that his novels were pedestrian and not well structured. So I thought of him as a kind of John the Baptist to Achebe’s Jesus: that he prepared the way for a superior writer whose work was much better written and structured.

Imagine my surprise when I met Cyprian Ekwensi in the International Writing Program in Iowa City in the fall of 1974. I had been in the IWP in 1973-74 (the program was seven months at that time) and now was working as a Research Associate for a project of Hualing Nieh Engle, Associate Director of the IWP, translating the Literature of the Hundred Flowers Movement of 1957-58 (I worked with John Hsu, who translated from Chinese, and I polished the translation). The first thing that struck me about Ekwensi was his stature. Physically: he was tall, slim, and had a forceful and direct voice. He was someone who knew exactly what he was doing. But what was this figure from the past doing now in the IWP? Read More...

---

Read an excerpt from Ekwensi's Jagua Nana here: Chapter One

---

WHAT CYPRIAN EKWENSI DID FOR ME continued...

I did not wonder for long. I found out he planned on writing a novel about the Nigerian civil war (aka the Nigeria/Biafra war) and just needed the time and space to do it. And I discovered he was a practical man as a writer. He obtained permission to attend classes on fiction in the Writers’ Workshop (which is a different program from the IWP) and to discuss drafts of the chapters of his novel as he wrote them. I read a draft and went to the class to discuss it. I found him very receptive to good criticism—that is, to practical suggestions that could help him make his writing better. I remember pointing out to him on the pages he had distributed before the class began what I did not like about one paragraph—he needed to add more details—and what I did like. In what I did like, he said, “That’s my title!” He took the phrase “Survive the Peace” and made it the title of the novel. He was to tell me when we met again some years later that he should have given me credit for the title, but of course novelists cannot give credit to everyone who has had some influence on their writing or it would get in the way of the writing itself.

I was talking to Ekwensi one day about Idi Amin and what was happening in Uganda. He said, “My God! You have the novel in your head! Write it!” “That’s funny!’ I said. “That’s exactly what Jose Antonio Bravo, the novelist from Peru in my session of the IWP, said to me the night before he left Iowa! And he wrote in a strange way. He planned his novels like an architect, with large sheets of paper on which he drew categories of major characters, minor characters, theme, story, chronology, etc., and when it was ready, he wrote.” “Good,” said Ekwensi. “Let me show you how I do it.” He took me to his room—and there was a large sheet of paper on the desk on which he had drawn categories of major characters, minor characters, chronology, etc. This was too much, I said to myself.

So I went to Iowa Book and Supply, bought large sheets of art paper, began drawing categories of major characters, minor characters, etc.—and then it took off. I began typing and typing, taping sheets to the wall in front of me. It was like a dam had burst, swallowing up (to mix metaphors) everything, including three fragments I had written, one in Uganda before leaving to accept the Seymour Lustman Fellowship at Yale granted for my first novel (In a Brown Mantle), the second after I got to Yale, and the third at Iowa City, fragments I thought were unrelated. I vaguely recalled receiving a phone call from Ekwensi and relying that I was writing my novel and his saying, “All right” and ringing off. I phoned Ekwensi some days later and said, “It is done!” “Good!” he said. “How long did it take you?” Nine days!” I said, amazed, because it seemed like years and years. “You see?” he said. “When I say I wrote Jagua Nana in nine days, people think I am not a serious writer!”

“However, I have one big problem,” I said to Ekwensi. “In real life, when Amin announced the Expulsion of Asians and gave them a deadline of three months, the time seemed so short it made everybody and everything frantic. But in the novel, three months is such a long time that it does not persuade the reader that there is any reason for the people to get frantic.” “Why don’t you change the Expulsion deadline from ‘three months’ to ‘the next moon?’” he suggested. “Amin is a Muslim so reference to the moon is not illogical. And while people are rushing around to find out what ‘by the next moon’ means, that will explain why everything gets frantic.” So I did make the change. In my novel The General is Up, the Expulsion deadline announced by the General is the next moon. It worked.

There were other practical suggestions Ekwensi gave me. He read my manuscript carefully and typed a report on it. He also wrote me a report in which he said how he could not put down the manuscript until he had finished reading it. As I said earlier, Ekwensi himself was completely open to suggestions for improving his writing, and he was equally willing to give other writers practical suggestions when it was still possible to improve the work. But he told me to now put aside the manuscript and not read it again for several days. It was later I came to realize that doing so meant drawing on the power of the subconscious when one got back to re-reading and revising the work. I incorporated many of his suggestions in the final version.

I wonder how much there is in common between our novels since I wrote mine while he was writing his. One similarity I am aware of is that in both Survive the Peace and The General is Up, the violence, which is horrible, is almost always described indirectly. This has the effect of not turning the reader off for direct violence is hard for the reader to take and s/he may block out the novel and instead appealing to the reader’s imagination.

There, of course, are differences between our novels. I have taught both in my classes on African Literature, and I have taught Ekwensi’s novel in my Guided Correspondence Course, Literatures of the African Peoples. My novel is much more of a Trickster novel (see my In the Trickster Tradition: The Novels of Andrew Salkey, Francis Ebejer and Ishmael Reed, London: Bogle-L’Ouverture, 1994)—and yet, and yet, as I show in my essay in Georg Gugelberger’s Marxism and African Literature, the juxtapositions of what just seem to be factual descriptions in Ekwensi’s novel contain within them moral judgements that the reader must make, such as for example concluding that the protagonist James Odugo is not just a poor innocent victim but also a self-centered and sexist man who contributes to the agonies of that terrible war and who grows to moral awareness just before he dies. There was another connection between our novels, although inadvertent: my title is taken from a poem by Christopher Okigbo, who died during the Nigerian Civil War.

I spent a lot of time with Ekwensi in those days. We went to some conferences together. I read a lot of his work. Sometimes I felt that he had under-written some parts and I told him so. He was always open to criticism that was specific that could help him improve his work. What he did not care for was criticism that came after the work was done and out. He once angrily said about a famous scholar who had written on him, “He has built two careers on me—the first attacking my work and the second praising my work!” He was not envious of the success of other writers. When I asked him who his favorite writers were, the first he named was Chinua Achebe.

Always practical. I asked him how come a pharmacist became a writer. He said he wanted to be a writer but knew at the time that he would not be able to sustain himself with his writing so he decided to study something from which he could make money which would finance his writing. I understand from Abioseh Porter (the editor of the 'Journal of the African Literature Association') that as he prepared to meet his ancestors, he collected all his work together. I expect Nigerian scholars will pay attention.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. When I told Ekwensi that I had completed the novel, he asked me how I felt. “Like I have recovered from a long illness,” I replied. Cyprian Ekwensi was not surprised. It made sense that he was a pharmacist and a writer for he knew the healing power of fiction.

Read an excerpt from Jagua Nana here: Chapter One

‘The Iowa Review Web’ Releases New Issue: “Instruments and Playable Texts”

The Iowa Review Web [TIR-W] announced the release of its newest publication, "Instruments and Playable Texts," guest-edited by Stuart Moulthrop.

The issue collects seven projects by six authors, including the distinguished digital writers Judy Malloy and John Cayley, as well as leading younger creators Nick Montfort, Elizabeth Knipe and Shawn Rider. It also includes Moulthrop's game-poem "Under Language," co-winner of the 2007 Ciutat de Vinaròs prize for electronic poetry.

The guest editor notes: "While all imaginative writing makes some approach to PLAY, texts become playable as they join that endeavor Cayley calls 'writing digital media.' We can now do literary work with the same tools and media that support dynamically interactive systems like video games, wikis, and social networks. This extension of literature into what Alan Liu and Katherine Hayles call 'the literary' calls for new ways of thinking, and new structures for invention: instruments both for previously impossible musics, and for seeing and testing emergent phenomena."

Read More...

---

'The Iowa Review Web' Releases New Issue: "Instruments and Playable Texts" continued...

The seven pieces in this issue blend science with melody, word with image, logic with allusion, self with community, signifying space and the slipperiness of time. Though only a tiny sample, they implicate a range of creative practice that plays important games and variations within the domain of digital culture.

TIR-W is sponsored by The University of Iowa Graduate College, and is a project of the Virtual Writing University Experimental Wing. Publishing electronic literature since 1999, TIR-W is committed to new writing, encouraging the investigation of text and hypertext in theory and practice at their deepest levels. It is searchable by title, author, and author information.

Autumn Hill’s ‘Anima Mundi’ Wins a 2008 Book of the Year Award

Autumn Hill Books of Iowa City received a 2008 Book of the Year Award for its 2007 title Anima Mundi. The novel, by Susanna Tamaro, was translated from the Italian by University of Iowa Professors Cinzia Sartini Blum (Dept. of French and Italian) and Russell Scott Valentino (Dept. of Cinema and Comparative Literature). The book’s Italian edition, which was originally published in 1997, has thus far been translated into 28 languages. An author tour is being planned in conjunction with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for late fall 2008.

The Book of the Year Awards are sponsored by Foreword Magazine and presented at Book Expo America every spring. Anima Mundi was awarded a silver medal in the fiction translations category.

Review: Ethan Canin’s “America America”

The fourth novel from Canin

In this Washington Post book review, senior editor Ron Charles heralds Ethan Canin's newest book America America as his "best novel" and "a worthy successor to Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men."

"Canin, who teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, has written before about the seductive and transformative power of people with extraordinary wealth, but never with such sensitivity," Charles writes. "[America America] couldn't have arrived at a more auspicious moment than this season of potentially epochal political change."

Read the entire review here: "Morality Play"

Summer Writing Festival Resumes on UI Campus

Despite delays and detours caused by flooding in the Iowa City area, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival will resume its summer sessions this week at the University of Iowa. Due to flooding, the program has added two brand-new sessions to the end of July. Check the schedule for more information on the weekend of July 26-27 and the week of July 27-August 1.

Many of the programs activities and locations have been changed to accommodate UI building closures. The following links provide updated information, schedules and maps:

• Revised General Schedule: Schedule.doc
• The Elevenses Reading series schedule: Revised Elevenses Calendar.doc
• New locations for Summer Writing Festival activities and classes: New Locations.doc
• Welcome Letter to new Summer Writing Festival Participants

For more information on the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, visit their site: http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/iswfest

UI’s Bowman House Harbors Displaced Departments

Faculty members meet outside the house

The recent flooding of the Iowa River has left many University of Iowa buildings debilitated in its wake, forcing many university departments out of their offices.

The Bowman House, home to the Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI) and the Writing University website, has been able to provide a space for a few of these departments. The Iowa Review, after having been evacuated from the English-Philosophy Building, was able to relocate to the second floor library space at Bowman House.

Faculty members from UI’s Center for the Book in North Hall and the School of Library and Information Science in the Main Library have also been welcomed to an office space after their evacuation, and two summer classes that needed a new location will take place in Bowman House as well. For more information about flooding and the UI community visit the University of Iowa website: UI Flood Information Page

91st Meridian’s New Issue Highlights Non-Fiction

A new issue of 91st Meridian, the IWPs on-line journal, has been released with a focus on non-fiction. The Special Section, guest-edited by Emily Goedde, features four essays hovering in the overlap between translation and non-fiction: Diana Thow is concerned with translation and memory, Russell Scott Valentino traces the voice a translator might share with a non-fiction writer, Becka Mara McKay considers redacting rules in translations of the Hebrew Bible, and Emily Goedde asks why Chinese travel literature is a genre largely missing in translatorial action.

Also in this issue -- essays and memoirs by Lawrence Pun, Vietnamese journalist Van Cam Hai, Al Mustaqueem Radhi and Puja Birla.
Read 91st Meridian Issue 6.1 here.

Workshop alum Michael Judge’s op-ed ‘After the Flood’

Flood waters on the UI campus

"Watching the waters of the Iowa and Cedar Rivers rise and subsume whatever they please -- homes, churches, businesses, museums and libraries filled with cultural treasures -- it's easy to see why floods play such a central role in mythology.
The water gives and takes life. From Gilgamesh to Noah, in Roman and Greek mythology, in nearly every culture and religion known to man, the flood comes -- and with the destruction comes renewal, rebirth, a chance at a better life."

In his Wall Street Journal editorial piece 'After the Flood', Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Michael Judge comments on this summer's record-breaking flooding in Iowa. He examines its impact on the state and on the University of Iowa campus. Read the entire article here: 'After the Flood'

Update: The Iowa Summer Writing Festival will resume on July 6th

Flood waters outside the IMU

June 18, 2008 -- Update: The weekend session of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival scheduled for June 21 – 22 and the week-long session scheduled for the week of June 23 have been cancelled. The Iowa Summer Writing Festival will resume on July 6th. Updates regarding location changes for Summer Writing Festival events will be posted at http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/iswfest/.

Visit the University of Iowa's Flood Information Site for more news.

2008 Iowa Summer Writing Festival Begins

Despite some delays and detours caused by flooding in the Iowa City area, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival started its 22nd year of summer workshops this week at the University of Iowa. The workshops, taught by UI professors and guest instructors, are designed to benefit writers at all levels of experience and achievement. Working in small groups, adult writers of all ages from across the country gather to share, read and discuss their work.

As a traditional feature of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, a series of readings and discussions of literary topics called the Elevenses will be offered throughout the workshop sessions. Discussions typically include topics of interest to the writers, including aspects of craft, process, the writing life, and publishing. These free, public events last one hour and are held in the auditorium of the Becker Communications Building on the University of Iowa campus, at 11 a.m., Monday–Friday, weekdays through Friday, July 25, with the exception of the week of June 30–July 4, when there is no festival session scheduled due to the Fourth of July holiday. Podcasts of these events will also be available here on the Writing University website, posted throughout the festival's duration.

For more information on the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, visit their site: http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/iswfest

Review: Nam Le’s first collection ‘The Boat’

Nam Le

"After beginning his career in an Australian law firm, Nam Le left to attend the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop—a move which was fortunate for the now 29-year old author. To be holed-up in a straight-laced, soul-sucking office, wearing slicked-backed hair and a structured suit would have been a tremendous waste of talent. In his debut short-story collection 'The Boat', Le demonstrates that leaving law and turning toward literature was the best decision he possibly could have made." -PhillyBurb.com

In this online review of Workshop graduate Nam Le's new collection of stories 'The Boat', PhillyBurb contributing editor Deidre Wengen writes "Every tale that the author tells is so puncturing, so sharp, that the whole collection becomes as dangerous and alluring as a drawer full of kitchen knives. Nam Le provides a genuine new voice in literary fiction and is undoubtedly an author to watch." Read the entire review here.

New: Read the New York Times Sunday Book Review of Nam Le's collection here

Stanley Award Winners Announced

The University of Iowa's Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI) would like to congratulate UI MFA students who have been awarded a Stanley Graduate Scholarship for International Research. Each student will be granted $2,000 to study or undertake writing projects abroad. The scholarships are awarded by the Stanley-UI Foundation Support Organization and are the premier award the University of Iowa grants for international study. Here is a list of this year’s winners:

Translation

• Puja Birla will be traveling to Fiji over the summer to gather English translations of Hindi literature for her project “Hindi Literature in Translation: Writings from India and Fiji.”
• Mary Bryant will be traveling to Germany to work with author Marica Bodroi on translations of the latter’s collection of short stories, Tito is Dead.
• Brooke Budy will be traveling to France to work on translations with the playwright Jean-Michel Ribes.
• Andrea Rosenberg is going to Colombia for research on the work of Alfredo Iriarte, whose “Bestiario tropical” she is translating.

Nonfiction

• Janet Hendrickson will research Creole culture and identity in Bluefields, Nicaragua for her project “A Nicaraguan Blue: Creole Culture in Transition on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast.”



“Wallace Stegner and the American West”: New York Times Book Review

Wallace Stegner

Wallace Stegner, UI alumnus and former faculty member (as well as native Iowan), has often been considered the "The Dean of Western Writers." In a recent biography on his writing career and life, "Wallace Stegner and the American West" (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), Philip L. Fradkin writes,

"As a student working toward a master's degree in an innovative writing program and as a professor with a doctorate in a recognized academic specialty (both degrees from The University of Iowa); as a teacher in the top writing programs in the country (Iowa, Bread Loaf, Harvard, and Stanford); and as a writer of volumes of commercially published fiction and nonfiction, Stegner not only bridged the gap between professor and professional writer but also constructed by example and teaching the tenuous structure that allowed many others to cross that same chasm."

In this New York Times book review of "Wallace Stegner and the American West," John Wilson highlights the book's insights into Stegner's hardscrabble childhood, his prodigious work ethic, and his relationships with his students, especially writer Ken Kesey. The article also provides a sample from the first chapter of Fradkin's biography and related links. Read the New York Times review here: 'That Stegner Fellow.'

Premiere of the Iowa New Play Festival

Iowa New Play Festival

Earlier this month, the Iowa New Play Festival presented more than a dozen new scripts from the University of Iowa Playwrights Workshop and the department's undergraduate playwrights in the UI Theatre Building.

As part of this festival, daily events included readings of plays, panel discussions and full feature performances. Five new plays, written by students in the Master of Fine Arts program in playwriting, were premiered with performances as well. Read more...




Middle East Reading and Lecture Tour Presents to Saudi Literati

The delegation speaks with Saudi Gazette Editor-in-Chief Dr. Muhammed N. Shoukany

An American delegation (consisting of poets, authors, novelists and writers) presented their work to a audience of Saudi scholars in Jeddah, Saudia Arabia on Sunday, April 20, as a part of the Middle East Reading and Lecture Tour. The tour was hosted by the University of Iowa's International Writing Program and made possible by a grant from the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

The evening was an opportunity for the speakers to share samples of their poetry and prose with an audience of doctors and professors of Arabic and English literature from many universities around the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The delegation in Jeddah, Saudia Arabia

Readers included Christopher Merrill (director of the UI's International Writing Program), Ron Carlson (director of the creative writing program in fiction at the University of California in Irvine), as well as many other honored guests. Read More...

Aeronwy Thomas and Peter Thabit Jones to Present a Dylan Thomas Tribute

Aeronwy Thomas

In celebration of National Poetry Month, Welsh poets Aeronwy Thomas (daughter of Dylan Thomas) and Peter Thabit Jones will read from their work and the works of Dylan Thomas in the Shambaugh House at the University of Iowa on Monday, April 28 at 7 pm.

A noted poet in her own right, Aeronwy Thomas, the second child of Dylan Thomas and his wife, Caitlin, is a writer, teacher and performer. She is known worldwide as an ambassador for her father’s work, and is president of the Dylan Thomas Society, Swansea. Her poetry and prose have been published widely, spanning 30 years of literary activity. Read more...

Peter Thabit Jones is the author of six collections of poetry and one of short stories, among them The Lizard Catchers, nominated for the 2007 Welsh Book of the Year award, and The Newspaper Birds, a bilingual Romanian/English collection. His work has appeared in books from publishers including Penguin, Simon and Schuster, Oxford University Press, and Titul Publishers/British Council (Russia).

Currently on an international tour, Thomas and Jones have given readings at the New York Public Library, Wellesley College, City College of New York, The National Arts Club of Manhattan, Northern Michigan University, Chicago Poetry Society, as well as other locations.




Workshop Authors Named 2008 Guggenheim Fellows

Samantha Chang

Workshop alumni Michael Paul Burkard, Lan Samantha Chang, Robin Hemley, Richard Panek, and Reginald Shepherd, were all named 2008 Guggenheim Fellows in an announcement this month by Edward Hirsch, president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Read more about this selection on the Iowa Writers' Workshop website.

IWP Alum Clifton Wins Irish Poetry Award

Clifton

The 2008 Irish Times Poetry Now Award was presented to Harry Clifton, a former fellow of the International Writing Program, at the DLR Poetry Now International Poetry Festival in Ireland this month.

The judges described Clifton's winning collection, Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks 1994-2004, as "the achievement of several years' work . . . with great profundity to the poems in how they explored ideas".

Clifton participated as a fellow in the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa in 1985, and has lived in Africa, Asia, Italy and France. He has published several collections of poems, including The Liberal Cage, The Desert Route: Selected Poems 1973-1988 and Night Train Through the Brenner. Read more...

The Patient Voice Project Awarded Major Project Grant

The University of Iowa Arts Share program's Patient Voice Project recently received a 2008 grant from the Johnson & Johnson/Society for the Arts in Healthcare partnership. The Patient Voice Project, which offers creative writing classes to chronically-ill hospital patients, is one of eight initiatives in the United States and Canada to be honored by the society. They plan to use the $40,000 grant to support the expansion of the project.
Read more...

Hass and Schultz Win Pulitzer Prizes

Hass

The 2008 Pulitzer Prizes were announced on Monday, April 7, and two of the winning authors, Robert Hass and Philip Schultz (both awarded with the Pulitzer for poetry), have affiliation with the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Robert Hass, professor at UC Berkeley and visiting professor at The University of Iowa, received the prize for his National Book Award winning collection of poetry, Time and Materials (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2007). Iowa Writers' Workshop alumnus Philip Schultz won for his volume of poetry, Failure (Harcourt, 2007).

Other workshop-affiliated authors were nominated as well, including workshop alumnus and former faculty member Denis Johnson for Tree of Smoke in the fiction category; and poet Ellen Bryant Voight, who received a Master of Fine Arts from the workshop, as the third poetry finalist.

RELATED ARTICLES
Hass and Schultz Win Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry

The Pulitzer Prize >>
2008 Winners Announced

The Iowa Writers' Workshop >>
Robert Hass and Philip Schultz Win 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

The University of Iowa >>
UI poets Hass and Schultz, and composer Lang win 2008 Pulitzer Prizes

The New York Times >>
2008 Pulitzer Prizes for Letters, Drama and Music

Mercury News >>
UC Berkeley English professor wins Pulitzer for poetry

UI Press Announces Winners of 2008 Iowa Short Fiction Awards

The University of Iowa Press has announced the latest winners of the Iowa Short Fiction Awards. Glen Pourciau from Texas received the 2008 Iowa Short Fiction Award for his collection "Invite"; and Illinois writer Molly McNett's "One Dog Happy" won the 2008 John Simmons Short Fiction Award.

The recipients were selected for the UI press by final judge Charles D'Ambrosio, author of "The Dead Fish Museum" and "Orphans." Read More...

Kate Christensen Wins 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award

Christensen

Writers' Workshop alumna Kate Christensen (MFA 1989) has been selected as the winner of the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, for her fourth novel, The Great Man.

Judges Molly Giles, Victor LaValle, and Richard Bausch selected The Great Man from a pool of almost 350 novels and short story collections by American authors published in the US during the 2007 calendar year. Submissions came from more than 70 publishing houses, including small and academic presses. Read more...

Full article: Kate Christensen Wins 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award (Iowa Writers' Workshop website)