For several years, University of Iowa literature professor Anna Barker has produced a steady blizzard of commentary on classic French literature: Hugo, Stendahl, Dumas, Balzac. In her debut book, 13 Notes from Napoleon, Iowa: Musings of the Edge of the French Empire (Ice Cube Press), Barker follows the trail of arguably the most important individual […]
Ice Cube Press
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘My Father Called Us Monkeys’ by Mario Duarte
When my friend Mario Duarte asked me to read his latest book, a series of connected short stories about a Mexican-American boy growing up in western Illinois called My Father Called Us Monkeys published by Ice Cube Press, I was both excited and a tad apprehensive.
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Saved By Schindler: The Life of Celina Karp Biniaz’ by William B. Friedricks
“I am a Holocaust survivor, and every survival story is unique. What makes mine unique is that I was fortunate enough to be on ‘Schindler’s List.’” These are the words of Celina Karp Biniaz, one of youngest to be included on Schindler’s List and among the last of the remaining survivors. The story of how […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘Bach and the Blues’ by Gary Kelley
Waterloo Cedar Falls Symphony: Between Bach and the Blues GBPAC Great Hall, Cedar Falls, Thursday, May 26 at 7 p.m., $6.75-55.75 The third week of November, 1936. Thanks to a brief story on National Public Radio, illustrator Gary Kelley learned the odd synchronicity of that moment, and decided to spin it into a graphic novel, […]
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‘There are no rules’: Long-time ‘Iowa Review’ editor David Hamilton talks family influence, the lure of nature and recent memoir ‘A Certain Arc’
I met David Hamilton, author of A Certain Arc: Essays of Finding my Way (Ice Cube Press), at a local Iowa City coffee shop in February of 2020, before the world began to social distance and wear masks due to COVID-19. The coffee shop was filled with people, in a way that wouldn’t be possible […]
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Local publisher spotlight: Ice Cube Press
Steve Semken founded Ice Cube Press in 1991, when he was living in Lawrence, Kansas. “I’d been working a series of jobs I hadn’t anticipated, like most of us need to do,” Semken said in an email, “and it was during a break at work that I wandered into the nearby Indie bookstore, picked up a copy of a Wendell Berry book
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Fracktivism lit: New anthology ignites environmental conversation
Reading with Fracture co-editor Taylor Brorby and contributors Tyler Priest, John Kenyon and Amy Weldon Prairie Lights — Sat., Mar. 26, 7 p.m. On Saturday a reading at Prairie Lights will feature the editors and a few of the contributors from a new anthology called Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America from […]
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North Liberty author offers uncommon gift with ‘Soul External’
“The only remark of nature is its silence, but that is not because the world around us has nothing to say. It is because we come unequipped with ears to hear.” — Paul Gruchow, Journal of a Prairie Year Since 1993, Steve Semken has published books about nature and the Midwest at Ice Cube Press […]
