The Mission Creek Festival, a highlight of the area’s arts and culture scene, always includes an impressive slate of authors and a variety of ways to interact with them.
This year’s festival includes the annual Lit Walk (April 8), which connects readers and writers in a different setting throughout downtown Iowa City; the Small Press & Literary Magazine Fair (April 9 at The Chauncey), which gathers together some of the most eclectic and electric publishers and publications from around the country; and the fifth iteration of the I.C.E. C.R.E.A.M. Comix & Zine Fair (April 9, PS1 Close House), the full name of which — Iowa City Expo for Comics and Real Eclectic Alternative Media — gives a sense of what’s on offer.
The festival also includes a number of readings, including an April 9 appearance at Prairie Lights featuring Sarah Gerard and Kaveh Akbar at 1 p.m. Gerard has been garnering an array of accolades for her most recent novel, True Love, and is also an acclaimed essayist.
I first encountered Gerard’s work in the form of her debut novel, Binary Star, published by Two Dollar Radio (a publishing house that will be represented during the Lit Walk and the Small Press & Literary Magazine Fair). That novel, which is narrated by a young woman with an eating disorder, has stayed with me since I reviewed it 2015, in large part due to the idiosyncratic voice at its center. I wrote, in part:
The narrator turns to the language and science of astronomy to find a parallel to her situation. With spare language that elucidates the act of starving oneself, Gerard has crafted a book that pulls us into it terrible gravity … This commentary is powerful in large part due to Gerard’s stylistic accomplishment. Binary Star is as hypnotic as it is troubling. As the narrator seeks to become less and less material, we become more and more tethered to her, her decline attractive and repulsive at the same time.
The pairing with Akbar, an Iranian-born poet, promises a session in which the power of words wielded with vision and intention can produce exceptional experiences for readers.
Many additional authors are part of the Mission Creek lineup, and the full details are available by visiting the schedule page of the festival website and using the date and literature tabs in combination to isolate the literary events. Mission Creek’s literary events are part of their robust slate of free programming.
