IWP Panel Discussion Series: Cultures in Conflict

A conversation between three IWP 2022 Fall Residency writers on the theme of “Cultures in Conflict: What Is the Writer’s Place?”

Join us in Meeting Room A of the Iowa City Public Library, or watch live online via the ICPL YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/thelibrarychannel

Zaza Muchemwa (poet, playwright, arts administrator; Zimbabwe) has had her poetry appear at PEN International and Badilisha Poetry X-change and included in the anthology Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights; author of the play The IVth Interrogation, she is also an award-winning theater director and producer. Her journalism appears in Index on Censorship Magazine, Povo Magazine and elsewhere. She participates thanks to a grant from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State.

Krystyna Dąbrowska (poet, essayist, translator; Poland) is the author of five poetry volumes, most recently Miasto z indu [City of Indium] (2022). The recipient of the Wisława Szymborska, the Kościelski and the Capital City of Warsaw literary awards, she has had her poems translated into twenty languages. In the US, they have appeared in Harper’s, Ploughshares, POETRY and elsewhere; in 2022, a poetry volume in English translation, Tideline, appeared from Zephyr Press. Dąmbrowska herself translates Louise Glück, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Charles Simic and many other Anglophone poets. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US.S. Department of State has funded her residency.

Ainur Karim (playwright; Kazakhstan), a lawyer by training, has won national and international awards for her first play What’s Up, Class 5-B?; The Passport, about political protests in Kazakhstan, was shortlisted for the Lyubimovka Drama Festival (Russia) and its English translation won the BBC International Radio Playwriting Competition. Additionally, Karim writes for the screen, edits, and translates between Russian and Kazakh. She participates thanks to a grant from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US State Department.