“Community is explicitly listed in the Mission Creek Festival tagline — ‘Music. Lit. Community.’ — which you won’t find with most other prominent music and arts festivals,” said Elly Hofmaier, marketing and programming coordinator for the Englert Theatre, which produces the festival. The Englert’s senior programming manager and festival director Brian Johannesen added, “Mission Creek […]
Mission Creek Festival
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops — ‘Manic Fever’
Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops – Manic Fever by Greg Wheeler & The Poly Mall Cops You didn’t realize you were waiting for this moment. But I promise you, you were. Later this month, on March 24, just a couple weeks ahead of their appearance at Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival, Des Moines […]
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Mission Creek Festival announces 2023 lineup, including Cat Power, Kevin Morby
Iowa City’s premiere music and literature festival, Mission Creek Festival, just announced its 2023 lineup. The festival will be taking place on April 6-8 and if you’re a loyal festival goer, you might recognize a few names. Among the Iowa locals hitting the Mission Creek music stage this year are Karen Meat, Extravision, Greg Wheeler […]
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Get lit at Mission Creek! A preview of the festival’s literature event track
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 […]
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From Marvel Comics to Chicago public schools, Eve L. Ewing pursues stories she sees as ‘essential’
When I mentioned that I was interviewing Dr. Eve L. Ewing to Matt Griffin, a Ph.D. student in my Communication Studies department, he recounted a moment that encapsulates her wide-ranging work that spans everything from poetry, comics and academic publishing to a recent novel for young readers, Maya and the Robot. During the 2019 Chicago […]
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Mission Creek announces its 2022 festival lineup
Mission Creek, Iowa City’s beloved annual celebration of music and literature, is officially back in person after two years. Festival organizers are calling this year “a return to normalcy.” The local festival was one of the first events to be postponed in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. After a series […]
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Gina Nutt talks terror ahead of her Mission Creek Festival 2021: Duos reading
Night Rooms is unlike anything I have ever read. So much so that I have repeated that phrase to anyone who will listen, including the author. I asked Gina Nutt, over email, light-headed at the opportunity to talk to someone I had already decided was a pioneer, how this book came to be. “I have […]
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Mission Creek performer Billy Dean Thomas: ‘I choose to stand confidently in my existence and truth’
Billy Dean Thomas, a.k.a. “The Queer Biggie,” is a quadruple-threat: a rapper, singer, instrumentalist and charismatic performer whose dynamic presence permeates their live shows and music videos. In “Rocky Barboa,” the Harlem-raised MC can be seen rhyming and bouncing to a sparse, retrofuturistic beat while dressed in unique, stylish outfits tailor-made for this gender-nonconforming artist. […]
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Power moves: Chuy Renteria on dance, language and growing up Mexican-American in small-town Iowa
Let’s start big: who are you, Chuy? Whoo, I could go in a rabbit hole with that one. I am an artist, an author, dancer — I mean, I have many, many different hats. Really my first love is dance. I started when I was 14; I’m 35 now. I went through undergrad at the […]
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Mission Creek announces a virtual two-day fest, Duos, featuring Japanese Breakfast, Andrea Gibson and more
Tickets are on sale now for the 2021 edition of Mission Creek Festival, Duos. Following on the heels of the community-beloved Ghost Creek film this winter, Mission Creek is once again delving into a virtual format to present a slate of not-to-be-missed performers. The fest was conceived last fall, when it became clear to the […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Ghost Creek shimmers in the fog of our pandemic-fatigued minds
We’re in a pandemic, in case you haven’t noticed. And in a pandemic, especially as the parent of a toddler, time (to put a fine point on it) gets a bit — slippery. So on this past rather innocuous Tuesday night, when Ghost Creek premiered, I accessed the website at “about 7” rather than at […]
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Mission Creek Festival decides to cancel all events for 2020
On March 12, when Mission Creek Festival organizers announced the cancellation of their April 1-4 fest due to the rising threat of COVID-19, they also announced plans to host “a special Mission Creek event in the late-summer/early-fall,” featuring some of the artists scheduled for the spring event. Those plans have now been dropped as well.
