In her new hybrid memoir, Amy Lee Lillard starts out slowly, advising the reader that A Grotesque Animal (University of Iowa Press) is about a middle-aged woman coming into her own following her late-in-life autism diagnosis. That is the premise, it’s true, but it is not a fair synopsis of this book. The early sections […]
Sarah Elgatian
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘All Black Everything’ by Shane Book
This book belongs in the hands of people whose cultures are misaligned. This book belongs to people whose words overlap, whose minds are many places, who hear a rhythm in every background. Shane Book’s All Black Everything (University of Iowa Press) is a promise kept. It is an altar to the church that gave him […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Be Not Afraid of My Body’ by Darius Stewart
Again and again in his new memoir Be Not Afraid of My Body (Belt Publishing, February 2024), Darius Stewart manipulates language, takes topics that are otherwise coated with stigma and hushed tones and makes them plain, reinvents form and expectations and insists that poets are taking over prose. Somehow, without maintaining any strict chronology or […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘This American Ex-Wife’ by Lyz Lenz
“My marriage ended on a Monday.” Lyz Lenz opens This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life (out Feb. 20, 2024) this simply. And she pulls no punches in laying out her nonfiction narrative that interrogates the traditions and institutions behind marriage. We follow the arc of Lenz’s divorce — her […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘The War Begins in Paris’ by Theodore Wheeler
As a reader, I have largely ignored the historical fiction genre. The War Begins in Paris (2023), by Theodore Wheeler, shows me that I have been remiss. Through it, I’ve learned that at its best, the genre turns a mirror toward the reader and subtly pushes us to see history repeating itself. And it can […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘Sundog’ by Melissa Conway
“At the end of January 2018 I sat in a coffee shop sipping a tea I couldn’t afford and reflected on the last month I barely survived. This exercise became a monthly meditation on time passing, what it’s like to live in a body, as a self, something holy, a wrong turn.” This introduction to […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘I am home.’ by Marianne Maili
Marianne Maili’s second full-length publication, I am home. (Chez Soi, 2023) is a memoir hiding inside other genres. It flits through its own timeline, asking to be considered among modernist texts. This makes sense, Maili is clearly influenced by modernism and themes of which come through in her story: there are moments that seem frivolous […]
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University of Iowa Translation Workshop celebrates 60 years of supporting the art and labor of translation
The Masters of Fine Arts in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa is one of only a handful of similar programs worldwide. A key facet, the 60-year-old UI Translation Workshop, predates the MFA program by a decade. Boasting the title of “the country’s first translation workshop in a university setting,” it took shape during […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story’ by Grant Faulkner
Readers may know Grant Faulkner for his work as director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) — a nonprofit organization dedicated to encouraging aspiring writers to pen a whole novel in 30 days — but his newest book, The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story, focuses on a different kind of literary challenge: […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Book Reviews, Statewide
Book Review: ‘Stellaphasia’ by Jason Bradford
Posthumously published from his MFA thesis, Jason Bradford’s Stellaphasia (North American Review, 2023) chronicles life inside a disabled body. It’s unfair to say that this collection is about being disabled or having a disability, though. This is a book of emotional observations, connection and communion. Bradford — a University of Northern Iowa alum — has […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review — ‘What Woman That Was: Poems for Mary Dyer’ by Anne Myles
An elaborate persona collection for American feminism, What Woman That Was: Poems for Mary Dyer (Final Thursday Press) by Anne Myles explores the foundations of a culture that would both vilify and glamorize actions of rebellion. This poetry collection is an incredible homage to “the courageous and troublesome women throughout history whose stories have been […]
Posted inRecreation
Live, laugh, LARP: Iowans wield foam weapons and forge fellowships through Belegarth
In a sunny clearing at Vander Veer Botanical Park, two sides draw their foam weapons and charge. This is Belegarth, a medieval-themed combat game. “Exercise is boring,” said Mazog, a Belegarth player of over 20 years. “Fighting is not boring.” Belegarth falls under the umbrella of Live Action Role Playing (LARPing). There are other types […]
