In an increasingly digital world, connecting over a common interest in real life is even more meaningful. “It’s person to person. It’s getting recommendations. It’s finding out from your friends or people you admire what they’re reading,” said C.J. Box, the author behind the Western mystery series Joe Pickett. “You just got to get out […]
Hanif Abdurraqib
‘The you is a door’: Abdurraqib sets high bar for Mission Creek 2024
Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival (which just kicked off its 19th year) has always fundamentally been about two things: creative place-making and wild moments of synchronicity. As such, it could have had no better opening than Thursday night’s reading by author and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib.
Culture critic and Mission Creek Festival presenter Hanif Abdurraqib is examining an American obsession: basketball
At just 40 years old, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib has covered a hell of a lot of ground in his career. A 2021 MacArthur fellow, his work has earned him an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence (for A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance) as well as landed him on […]
Music weaves through all aspects of life for poet-critic Hanif Abdurraqib
Music critic, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib has made a career writing about music in both a critical and poetic way. The two aspects that aren’t often mixed, but Abdurraqib has seen renowned successes with his four books. He’ll be reading from them at Prairie Lights on Thursday, Jan. 30 at 7 p.m.

