In the translator’s note, Aron Aji — director of MFA in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa — gives some insights on his methodology and experience as both a reader and translator of Efe Duyan’s The Behavior of Words (White Pine Press, 2023). “Given the infamous incommensurability of English and Turkish grammars, the process […]
Sarah Elgatian
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘Accidental Sisters: The Story of My 52-Year Wait to Meet My Biological Sibling’ by Katherine Linn Caire
I try to imagine myself learning, at age 52, that I have a sister. I think about my own sister and how important that relationship is to me. I think about how much life there is in 52 years — how much identity is formed, how awkward it becomes just making friends as an adult […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Camonghne Felix on calculating love and prose in her new book, ‘I want Black women to feel empowered by it’
Reading Camonghne Felix’s 2023 memoir Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation is a gut punch over and over and over again. It’s one of those books I had to put down every couple of pages to catch my breath. Felix’s innate ability to create empathy in her readers is unparalleled. I want to emphasize […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Meet the three queer women of color headlining Mission Creek Festival’s lit section this year
Camonghne Felix, Shelley Wong and Michelle Zauner are among the most innovative writers working today and all happen to be queer women of color which, historically, may have kept them from the spotlight. Zauner, frontwoman for the band Japanese Breakfast and guitarist for Little Big League, became a household name in the literary world with […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Invasives’ by Emily Kingery
Emily Kingery’s Invasives (Finishing Line Press) opens in a garden and closes in a garden, repeatedly returning to Eden and tearing it down with one consistent throughline: that which is invasive. The opening poem, “Musk Thistle,” weaves together two concepts such that they are inextricable. It talks about pulling weeds and ponders the difference between […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘What’s Left’ by Tate Lewis-Carroll
What’s Left (Finishing Line Press) builds its atmosphere immediately — the cover and epigraph synching an ambiance by opening with a formally stylized Nirvana quote followed by a transcription of a sparse voice message from the author’s father (the cover is a cardboard box with the top folded shut, it’s labeled in permanent marker with […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘Sound Fury’ by Mark Levine
Things not to do: read Mark Levine’s Sound Fury while battling a nasty rhinovirus. Here’s why: Levine (deftly) uses so many literary devices simultaneously that one really needs the full use of their faculties to experience Sound Fury (University of Iowa Press). In my first round of reading, while sick, I thought I’d be compelled […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Press Profile: 508 Press, founded by Mackie Garrett
Mackie Garrett, founder of Iowa City’s 508 Press, started taking classes on the letterpress after receiving an invitation to an event at Public Space One by a colleague. “I was at a point with professional changes where I felt a little adrift in Iowa City and I started going to poetry readings,” Garrett said. He […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Who tells the story? Madhushree Ghosh speaks on science and the arts at the Examined Life Conference
Madhushree Ghosh returned to California from Belgium on Friday and will fly to Iowa this week to be the featured presenter at the 16th annual Examined Life Conference, hosted by the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. The conference focuses on the links between medicine and the arts. Ghosh […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review: ‘Searching for Petco’ by Skylar Alexander
Searching for Petco (Forklift Books, 2022) opens like someone suddenly turned on a speaker. I felt accosted by author Skylar Alexander’s opening poems: clearly meant to be spoken, clearly friends with slam poetry. Extra-sensory and openly branded “millennial.” Alexander brazenly powers into an image, hands her reader an archetype and disarms them on entry. “Oh,” […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Iowa City’s Mic Check Poetry Festival to return with a slam in November after ‘phenomenal’ 2021 turnout
Iowa City Poetry’s Mic Check Poetry Festival will return Nov. 11-12 after organizers Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey and Lisa Roberts received what Rainey called a “phenomenal showing” of support and enthusiasm last year. The November festival will be only two days this year instead of three, but it will include expanded offerings and an […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book Review and Q&A: Sarah Thankam Mathews — ‘All This Could Be Different’
When I started reading All This Could Be Different (Viking, 2022) by Sarah Thankam Mathews, I was nervous about the passive voice, tonally similar to other books I’ve recently read which I felt lacked substance. But this is intentional. Our narrator, Sneha, is apathetic, barely teasing interest, she merely exists for the first part of […]
