PrairieLights: IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series

Please join for their annual IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series! This week’s event features IWP Residents Nir Ratzkovsky (Israel) and Juan Carlos Reyes Vázquez (Mexico). They will be accompanied by University of Iowa Executive Director of the Office of Writing and Communication, Daniel Khalastchi, and Robert P. Dana Director of the Center for the Literary Arts at Cornell College, Rebecca Entel.

Nir Ratzkovsky is an Israeli writer, translator from French and English into Hebrew, and scholar of translation and cultural studies. He is the author of the novel Beloved, Daughter and the nonfiction book Adventures of Molière in the Holy Tongue. He has translated major writers including Marcel Proust, Michel Houellebecq, Emmanuel Carrère, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir and Jonathan Littell. Nir teaches at the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University. He is currently working on a new novel.

Juan Carlos Reyes Vázquez (fiction writer, screenwriter, filmmaker; Mexico) is the author of five books of short fiction, including Impala (2021), Para subir y caer (2015), Iktumbe (2014), Circo de pulgas (2010), and Imagínate lejos (2002). His fiction often explores memory, loss, violence, childhood, altered bodies, and the fragile border between the intimate and the strange. His work has appeared in the literary journals Crítica and Blanco Móvil, as well as in the anthologies Cuentistas de Tierra Adentro 2007–2017 and Cuerpos Rotos. He has also written and directed twelve short films, including Silla eléctrica para moscas, winner of Best Animated Short Film at the San Diego Latino Film Festival, and Absoluto vacío ensordecedor, winner of Best Experimental Short Film at the Dubai International Shortfilm Festival. He holds a PhD in Creation and Cultural Theories and is a Senior Research Professor at Universidad de las Américas Puebla, where he has taught literature, film, narrative, and screenwriting for more than fifteen years. He is a member of Mexico’s National System of Researchers.

Daniel Khalastchi is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of four acclaimed books of poetry. His most recent collection, The Story of Your Obstinate Survival, received the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry and was longlisted for the PEN/Volecker Award for Poetry. A former visiting faculty member at UT Austin’s Michener Center for Writers, Daniel currently lives in Iowa City where he is the executive director of the University of Iowa’s Office of Writing and Communication and the cofounder and managing editor of Rescue Press. His fifth book, And the Tribulation Cometh Upon You, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press.

Rebecca Entel is the author of two novels, Fingerprints of Previous Owners and Boats Drawn by Children, which is forthcoming from Simon and Schuster. Her stories and essays have appeared in such journals as Guernica and Literary Hub; and her flash in Hobart, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. At Cornell College, she is Professor of English and Creative Writing, teaching creative writing, U.S. and Caribbean literature, and the literature of social justice; as Robert P. Dana Director of Cornell’s Center for the Literary Arts, she oversees a visiting writers series, workshops and events, a literature and art magazine, and an internship program. She also mentors in the PEN America Prison and Justice Writing program.