According to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the acclaimed poet, playwright, essayist, short-story guru and award-winning novelist Denis Johnson has returned…
literature
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Style Points: Hey, put your Google machine down and pick up a style tome
Sometimes books — BIG books — big, impractical books with beautiful photographs are the best gifts of all. Why? They edify, they are good to use as a laptop…
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Daniel Boscaljon’s new book asks readers to take another look at faith
As someone who has not successfully read any works of philosophy — not made it past the preface in most cases — my motivation to read Vigilant Faith came…
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Vic Pasternak, Russell Jaffe and Kembrew McLeod to read at Gabe’s this Saturday
Vic Pasternak comes out of retirement for a special Mission Creek Festival reading at 2:00 p.m. this Saturday at Gabe’s.
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University program creates groundbreaking plays via live stream technology
“Five American dollars will cure you of your ANGER! I am your Punching Bag!”
So begins Subway, a humorous short play by Qian Jue wherein two street hustlers–one Chinese; the other Japanese–squabble over how to best procure cash from distracted subway-goers, and with their status as immigrants in America.
Qian Jue is one of the many young playwrights commissioned by the International Writing Program (IWP) for Book Wings 2013 a collaborative theatre project which aims to connect theaters in America, China, and Russia through state-of-the-art videoconferencing software.
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University of Iowa International Writing Program Bridges the Cultural Divide.
How does literature bring us together? Does some quality contained within allow us to communicate beyond linguistic, cultural and personal barriers – barriers many of us find insurmountable? Can the stories of cultures distinct from our own tell us more about ourselves than we expect? These were the sort of questions which arose recently as […]
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Life of Discovery exchange program to bring four top Chinese authors Iowa City
Four Chinese writers are visiting Iowa City in the this week as part of the UI’s International Writing Program’s (IWP) Life of Discovery exchange program. The visit is timely in light of the recent announcement that Mo Yan, Chinese novelist and 2004 graduate of the IWP, would be the recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize […]
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Marilynne Robinson interview – Reading 10/24 at Englert Theatre
I sat down on behalf of Little Village to catch up with Marilynne Robinson in her office at the Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, in advance of her upcoming talk at the Englert Theater on Wednesday, Oct. 24. The acclaimed novelist, essayist and professor has received more awards, fellowships and prestigious visiting lectureships than can be tallied here, […]
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Books: Harrowing Plenty – A review of Atina Diffley’s “Turn Here Sweet Corn”
In Turn Here Sweet Corn, Atina Diffley recounts a life of farming, of building and developing relationships with food and the soil, with wildlife and insect life, with urban living and with the idea of progress itself. It is also a guidebook for how we can intelligently make those relationships work for all involved. Success […]
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Books: Where Choice Lives – A Conversation with Poet and Neurologist Dawn McGuire
What is the worth of a piece of text? Is it found in the words themselves—in the stringing together of symbols which, by forming sentences and paragraphs, pages and chapters, communicates to the reader some message? Is the book itself merely a vessel? Surely there are those of us who would argue otherwise. A good […]
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Iowa City Readings and Events: July 23-26
Kind salutations to the readers, writers, critics and the simply-just-interested-in-books of Iowa City. Being in the wake of the Iowa City Book Festival we may assume that our weekly ration of literary readings and seminars has been exhausted, but – to our great pleasure – that is not the case. I’ll highlight a handful of […]
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The Art of Phil Hester
One day Rory Regan arrived at his father’s pawnshop to find his dad and three of his dad’s friends tortured and on the brink of death. Regan rushed to their aide, but was electrocuted and knocked out by a wire used to torture the men. When he came to, his father and the friends were […]
