Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature

Ayana Mathis: The Unsettled
2023-10-14 16:00 (America/Chicago) | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Ayana Mathis with special guest moderator Lan Samantha Chang.
From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. She is repulsed by the shelter’s squalid conditions: the barely edible food, and the shifty night security guard. She is determined to rescue her son from the perils and indignities of that place, and to save herself from the complicated past that led them there. Ava has been estranged from her own mother, Dutchess, since she left her Alabama home as a young woman barely out of her teens. Despite their estrangement and the thousand miles between them, mother and daughter are deeply entwined, but Ava can’t forgive her sharp-tounged, larger than life mother whose intractability and bouts of debilitating despair brought young Ava to the outer reaches of neglect and hunger. Ava wants to love her son differently, better. But when Toussaint’s father, Cass, reappears, she is swept off course by his charisma, and the intoxicating power of his radical vision to destroy systems of racial injustice and bring about a bold new way of communal living.
Meanwhile, in Alabama, Dutchess struggles to keep Bonaparte, once a beacon of Black freedom and self-determination, in the hands of its last five Black residents—families whose lives have been rooted in this stretch of land for generations—and away from rapidly encroaching white developers. She fights against the erasure of Bonaparte’s venerable history and the loss of the land itself, which she has so arduously preserved as Ava’s inheritance.
As Ava becomes more enmeshed with Cass, Toussaint senses the danger simmering all around him—his well-intentioned but erratic mother; the intense, volatile figure of his father who drives his fledgling Philadelphia community toward ever increasing violence and instability. He begins to dream of Dutchess and Bonaparte, his home and birthright, if only he can find his way there.

Patchwork: A Reading of Literary Translation
2023-10-14 16:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
In every corner of this universe, there is a story waiting to be heard. Join the students of the Literary Translation MFA as they gather and read excerpts from their translations of world literature. In collaboration with Exchanges Literary Journal, the inaugural session of this reading series celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Iowa Translation Workshop.

Nathan Hill: Wellness
2023-10-14 14:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Nathan Hill’s best-selling debut novel, The Nix, was named the number one book of 2016 by Entertainment Weekly and one of the year’s best books by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Slate, and many others. The native Iowan returns with Wellness. Moving from the gritty ’90s Chicago art scene to a suburbia of detox diets and home-renovation hysteria, this new novel mines the absurdities of modern technology and modern love to reveal profound, startling truths about intimacy and connection.

Mindy Mejia: To Catch a Storm
2023-10-14 14:30 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Mindy Mejia is a CPA and a graduate of the Hamline University MFA program. Her debut novel, The Dragon Keeper, was published by Ashland Creek Press in 2012. She lives in the Twin Cities with her family, and is the author of Strike Me Down, Everything You Want Me to Be, and Leave No Trace. Her latest mystery novel is To Catch a Storm.

Eskor David Johnson: Pay As You Go
2023-10-14 13:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Eskor David Johnson is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago and the United States. His writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern. A graduate of Harvard University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he currently lives in New York City. Pay As You Go is his debut novel.

Kristen Roupenian: Cat Person
2023-10-14 13:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Kristen Roupenian holds a PhD in English from Harvard, an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, and a BA from Barnard College. She is the author of the short story, “Cat Person,” which was published in The New Yorker. She will read from her short story collection, Cat Person. Presented in partnership with the ReFocus Film Festival.

Storytelling Across the Arts: A Conversation with Lonnie Holley & Lee Baines
2023-10-14 13:00 | Old Capitol Senate Chamber, 21 N. Clinton St., Iowa City, 52242, United States
Note: Kurt Vile will no longer be a part of this event.
We are excited to present instead a conversation between Lonnie Holley, a renowned visual artist and musician, and musician and writer Lee Baines.
Holley’s most recent album Oh Me Oh My reflects on his difficult personal experiences growing up in the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children in the 1950s. Lee Baines, who first met Lonnie Holley when Baines was a child, is a musician and writer. He is the frontman of the remarkable punk band Lee Baines & The Glory Fires. His poems “Work Lunch” were recently published in The New Yorker.
Part of Hancher’s Infinite Dream festival

Daniel Kraus: Whalefall
2023-10-14 11:30 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Daniel Kraus is a New York Times bestselling author. His collaboration with legendary filmmaker George A. Romero, The Living Dead, was acclaimed by The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Iowa native will discuss his new novel, Whalefall.

Justin Torres: Blackouts
2023-10-14 11:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Justin Torres is the author of We the Animals, which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was translated into fifteen languages, and was adapted into a feature film. A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he will read from and discuss his new book, Blackouts. Fellow Workshop graduate Jamel Brinkley will moderate.

Josh Larsen: Fear Not!
2023-10-14 10:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Josh Larsen is the co-host of the radio show and podcast Filmspotting and author of Movies Are Prayers. He will discuss his new book, Fear Not! A Christian Appreciation of Horror Movies. Presented in partnership with the ReFocus Film Festival.

Poetry Talks Live Iowa – Japan: A bilingual reading held simultaneously in Iowa City and Tokyo
2023-10-13 20:00 - 23:00 | 120 Phillips Hall, 16 N Clinton St, Iowa City, IA, 52245, United States
Involving the Japanese poet YOTSUMOTO Yasuhiro (IWP 2023), the Akutagawa Prize-winning writer LI Kotomi (IWP 2023), the Japanese poet SUGA Keijiro, UI students from JPNS 3201 Workshop in Japanese Literary Translation; International Writing Program writers from Japan, Taiwan, Jamaica, Nigeria, and Kazakhstan; 10 young Japanese poets and several dozen Japanese undergraduates who will connect to us via Zoom; and other guests. Our students are translating poems by these young Japanese poets, and the Japanese students will be translating poems by the IWP writers from English into Japanese.
Presented by the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies and International Programs at the University of Iowa.

John Irving in Conversation with Lan Samantha Chang
2023-10-13 19:30 | Hancher Auditorium, 141 Park Rd., Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Presented in collaboration with the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, University Lecture Committee, Iowa City Book Festival, and Refocus Film Festival
Part of Hancher’s Infinite Dream festival
John Irving is one of the foremost writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. He is the author of several books, including the novels The Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp, and most recently The Last Chairlift. He was also inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Irving returns to our campus and community to discuss his life and creative process alongside Iowa Writers’ Workshop director Lan Samantha Chang.

International Writing Program Panel Discussion: On the Body
2023-10-13 12:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A person’s body affects the way they navigate the world, and their experiences in it. How much power does a body (with regard to, for instance, race, gender, sexuality, physical ability) have over, or in, an artist’s work? And, with what devices can a writer affect issues their body can present– for instance via symbolism, or by changing media, or in the physical circumstances of reading and writing?

Busi Mahlangu (South Africa), Wesley Macheso (Malawi), Kevin Chen (Taiwan)

Dreamwell Theatre Presents: Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters
2023-10-12 19:30 | The James Theater, 213 N Gilbert St, Iowa City, IA, 52245, United States
Terry Pratchett takes Shakespeare’s Macbeth and then turns it up ’till the knob comes off. It’s all there – a wicked duke and duchess, the ghost of the murdered king, dim soldiers, strolling players, a land in peril. And who stands between the Kingdom and destruction? Three witches.
Written by Sir Terry Pratchett, and adapted for the stage by Stephen Briggs
Directed by Josh Sazon
Ticket info:
https://www.thejamesic.com/
319-600-2936
213 N. Gilbert Street, Iowa City

The Swine Republic: Struggles with the Truth about Agriculture and Water Quality
2023-10-12 19:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Author Dr. Chris Jones (The Swine Republic) is joined by journalists Keith Schneider and Erin Jordan to examine Iowa and the Midwest’s efforts at water quality, public information, and the modern myth of the “farmer.”

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Translation! Ever New, Ever Elusive
2023-10-12 18:30 | Old Capitol Senate Chamber, 21 N. Clinton St., Iowa City, 52242, United States
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor at Columbia University. Her first job was at Iowa (1965-77), where she went through the ranks, and profited greatly by the absolute support of colleagues among whom she would mention President Sandy Boyd, Vice President May Brodbeck, Chairs John Gerber and David Hayman, and many many others. She met Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Okot p’Bitek, and Sankha Ghosh at the International Writing Program; worked with John Cheever and Anthony Burgess at the Writer’s Workshop, and was involved in the hiring of Maureen Robertson, Danny Weissbort, Steven Unger, Ruedi Kuenzli, Sheldon Pollock and others. Her special friends were Alexander Aspel, Cassia Tomasini, Dale Godwin. She has written a few books, received a few prizes and holds a few honorary degrees. For many years, she has been grappling with finishing a book on W.E.B. Du Bois and writing an Afterword on the first English translations of Gramsci’s conversation with Julia and Tatiana Schucht while imprisoned. Humanities for social justice is her obsession. Translation is the medium of this work.

Tracie Morris: human/nature poems
2023-10-11 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Weaving intimate portraits of home with what could be the travel journals of a 21st-century troubadour, Tracie Morris’s human/nature poems is a hymn to the human and more-than-human world. These poems bear the record of a state of heightened perception, springing from the displacements of travel and returning, of memory and its triggers, of global pandemics, ecological catastrophe, political unrest, and mourning. With great precision and abundant insight, Morris articulates the seam of our “human/nature”: “Sol has hands in Cairo, in Luxor / today He Rises. I wonder where / the outstretch lands. It matters knot / what circles your head. What your / kin says is power. Aspects of ever / lasting light, life is always made from parting.”

How to read old paper: Searching for meaning in early modern English writing paper
2023-10-11 18:00 | Shambaugh Auditorium, University of Iowa Main Library, 125 W Washington St, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Please join us for our annual invited Iowa Bibliophiles lecture as we study Shakespeare’s world through a unique lens.

This year we are joined by Heather Wolfe, a consulting curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. She will present her talk “How to read old paper: Searching for meaning in early modern English writing paper” at 6pm October 11th in Shambaugh Auditorium and on Zoom.
In the late 1580s and 1590s, England experienced a writing paper renaissance. High status people began to have access to and develop a vocabulary for an expanding range of imported fine paper. At the same time, a German refugee jeweler named John Spilman began one of the first viable paper mills in England. Despite his documented struggles in sourcing rags, he supplied writing paper to Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council and a handful of printers, adorning it with intricate watermarks depicting the queen’s coat of arms, royal badges, and cypher. Join Wolfe as she digs into the archival evidence to tell a story about paper that begins with impoverished and unhoused London rag women and ends with Queen Elizabeth.
In addition to stewarding the manuscript collection, Wolfe teaches people how to read English secretary hand and oversees transcription crowdsourcing projects at the Folger. She publishes widely on early modern English manuscripts and hybrid books. Her essay “The Material Culture of Record-Keeping in Early Modern England,” co-written with Peter Stallybrass, received the 2019 Archival History Article Award from the Society of American Archivists. She was also the Munby Fellow in Bibliography at the University of Cambridge in 2021/22. Wolfe received her BA from Amherst College, her M.L.I.S. from UCLA, and her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.
This is a hybrid event. You can join us in person at 6pm at Shambaugh Auditorium in the Main Library, or on Zoom by registering here

Marta McDowell: Gardening Can Be Murder
2023-10-11 12:00 | Coralville Public Library, 1401 5th St., Coralville, IA, 52241, United States
With their deadly plants, razor-sharp shears, shady corners, and ready-made burial sites, gardens make an ideal scene for the perfect murder. But the outsize influence that gardens and gardening have had on the mystery genre has been underappreciated. Now, Marta McDowell, a writer and gardener with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, illuminates the many ways in which our greatest mystery writers, from Edgar Allen Poe to authors on today’s bestseller lists, have found inspiration in the sinister side of gardens.
From the cozy to the hardboiled, the literary to the pulp, and the classic to the contemporary, Gardening Can Be Murder is the first book to explore the mystery genre’s many surprising horticultural connections. Meet plant-obsessed detectives and spooky groundskeeper suspects, witness toxic teas served in foul play, and tour the gardens—both real and imagined—that have been the settings for fiction’s ghastliest misdeeds. A New York Times bestselling author herself, McDowell also introduces us to some of today’s top writers who consider gardening integral to their craft, assuring that horticultural themes will remain a staple of the genre for countless twisting plots to come.

The Machine Stops: A New Opera by John Lake and Cecile Goding
2023-10-10 19:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
The Machine Stops: A New Opera by John Lake and Cecile Goding
Selected Videoclips and Talkback
Opera fan and UI Professor Emerita Miriam Gilbert leads a talkback session on The Machine Stops: A New Opera by John Lake and Cecile Goding, joined by the opera’s lead soprano Élise DesChamps (UI School of Music) and sci-fi scholar Brooks Landon (UI Dept. of English).
The Machine Stops, featuring a libretto written by Iowa author and UI workshop graduate Cecile Goding and original score composed by Iowa City musician John Lake, debuted at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts in July 2022. Based on a 1909 science fiction story by E. M. Forster, the opera imagines a world where all reality is filtered through The Machine. Everyone lives alone, communicating solely through their hand-held devices. Sound familiar?
Selected videoclips of the CCPA production of The Machine Stops will be shown. Audiences responded to the debut performance with high praise: “Surprisingly contemporary;” “a powerful experience;” “a stunning success;” “beautiful and complex;” “gorgeous music and strong libretto.”

Sarah Cypher: The Skin and Its Girl
2023-10-10 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great aunt’s secrets in this sweeping debut, a family saga confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage.
In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns a vibrant, permanent cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of all Rummani lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love.
Decades later, Betty returns to her Aunt Nuha’s gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she’s every known or should she follow her heart for the woman she loves, perpetuating her family’s cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt’s complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which Nuha hid to help the family emigrate to the U.S. But as Betty soon discovers, her aunt hid much more than that.
The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us–and even wield the power to restore a broken family. Sarah Cypher is that rare debut novelist who writes with the mastery and flair of a seasoned storyteller.

Curator Guided Tour: Hey Buddy, I’m Bill
2023-10-10 16:00 | University of Iowa Main Library Gallery, 125 W Washington St, Iowa City, IA, United States
Hey Buddy, I’m Bill tells the story of Bill Sackter, the namesake of Wild Bill’s (formerly Wild Bill’s Coffee Shop) in the University of Iowa School of Social Work. From his early life in Minneapolis to his 44-year institutionalization for an intellectual disability to his years of friends and fame in Iowa City, the exhibit shares a glimpse into Bill’s life and legacy. The exhibit also acknowledges some of Iowa’s own history with institutionalization and progress with disability rights, and places Bill’s story in the context of the historic treatment of people with disabilities. The exhibit not only tells how Bill’s life embodied the disability practices and perspectives of his time, but also how the national prominence of his life story helped America make progress toward better understanding and treatment of people with disabilities.
The exhibition features artifacts, documents, and ephemera from Bill’s life as well as ways for visitors to contribute stories about their own experiences with disability.

Anna Karenina starring Greta Garbo, Basil Rathbone, and Fredric March
2023-10-09 19:00 | FilmScene at The Chauncey, 404 E College St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
This 19th-century period piece is an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel. On a trip to St. Petersburg, Anna Karenina (Greta Garbo), neglected wife of the famed Alexei Alexandrovitch Karenin (Basil Rathbone), meets a handsome military officer, Count Vronsky (Fredric March). Vronsky becomes enamored of Anna and follows her back to Moscow to confess his feelings. Will she follow her heart to be with him, even if it destroys her family and results in public disgrace?

Little Village Presents: Roast of Iowa City
2023-10-08 18:00 | ReUnion Brewery, 113 E College St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
Year after year, some of the area’s most treasured comics and writers gather together to relentlessly burn and mock everything sacred and dear about our town. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

One Community One Book: The Farm by Joanne Ramos
2023-10-08 13:30 | C20 Pomerantz Center, 213 N Clinton St, Iowa City, 52242, United States
The 2023 One Community, One Book is The Farm by Joanne Ramos. Told from the perspective of four women, The Farm explores gender, race, and class, and of who has access to power, freedom, and choice.
This event is free and open to the public. This event will have ASL interpretation. Doors open at 1 p.m. Author Keynote begins at 1:30 p.m. Author book signing immediately following the lecture.

Author and City of Literature esteemed City of Literature board member, Lyz Lenz, has launched a virtual book club to discuss “The Farm” by Joanne Ramos. Join the discussion at: Men Yell at Me Book Club.

SlamoVision Poetry Competition
2023-10-02 18:30 - 20:30 | PS1 Close House, 538 S Gilbert St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Slam poets from around Iowa are invited to participate in a special international slam event in Iowa City on Oct. 2.
SlamoVision is a project of the international UNESCO Cities of Literature. Slam poets in some of the 42 Cities of Literature around the world will compete in their home cities. One poet from each participating city will move on to an international competition to be judged by fans from the other cities. At the end of the process, one poet will be named the SlamoVision champion for 2023. This is the fifth year for the international competition.
The Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature and Iowa City Poetry will co-host Iowa City’s slam poetry event at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 2, at the Public Space One location at the Close House, 538 S. Gilbert St. Poets from across Iowa may participate. Sign-up begins at 6:30 p.m.; the slam begins at 7 p.m. Each poet has three-and-a-half minutes to perform. At the completion of three rounds, the winning poet will be chosen to represent Iowa City in the international competition.
Twelve Cities of Literature are participating in Slamovision 2023: Dublin (Ireland), Exeter (UK), Iowa City (US), Kuhmo (Finland), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Manchester (UK), Melbourne (Australia), Nottingham (UK) Québec City (Canada), Reykjavik (Iceland), Tartu (Estonia), and Vilnius (Lithuania).
A video of the winning poet from the Oct. 2 event will be entered into the international contest. Audiences in each participating City of Literature will gather to watch and score the dozen video. The Iowa City watch event will be held as part of the Mic Check Poetry Fest, Nov. 3-4. The scores from all of the cities will be tabulated and an international SlamoVision poet will be crowned during an online event on Dec. 5 hosted by the Nottingham City of Literature in England.
Check out the 2022 and 2021 winners:
Strong Tea by Abíọ́dún ‘Abbey’ Abdul
Island Screams by Cara Thompson
To learn more and see all previous Slamovision Contestants, please visit:
https://cityofliterature.com.au/slam-o-vision/

Family Concert
2023-06-24 10:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
To round out the season, MusicIC will return to the Iowa City Public Library to perform its beloved family concert at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 24, featuring a program of musical storytelling for kids of all ages, in partnership with the Iowa City Public Library children’s department.

Anonymous Was a Woman (ticketed event)
2023-06-23 19:30 | Riverside Theatre – A pre-concert lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m., followed by the concert at 7:30 p.m., 119 E. College St., Iowa City, 52240
A pre-concert lecture by Marian Wilson Kimber will begin at 6:30 p.m., followed by the concert at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, June 23, will see MusicIC present Anonymous Was a Woman, an intimate concert at 7:30 p.m. at Riverside Theatre (119 E College Street), drawing connections between two powerhouse women: Prominent English author and feminist icon, Virginia Woolf, and composer Dame Ethel Smyth – the first female composer to be granted a damehood. The program will begin with Smyth’s Violin Sonata in A minor (Op. 7), written in 1887. Though the classical music canon has historically relegated her to a footnote, Smyth is enjoying some long overdue recognition, both for her distinctive musical voice and larger than life personality. Ahead of her time, Smyth was a suffragette and defiantly out about her sexuality and relationships with women.
Following Smyth’s Sonata, audiences will be treated to a semi-staged version of Dominick Argento’s song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, which won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Music, the same year in which it was premiered in Minneapolis. Smyth and Woolf would meet near the end of their lives and continue a fruitful intellectual and artistic relationship, lasting until Woolf’s suicide in 1941. By pairing Smyth’s music and Woolf’s private words, we can begin to allow the deeply personal etchings of these two women to fully come to the forefront, in a way they were unable to during their lives.
Before the concert, music scholar, author, and University of Iowa Professor Marian Wilson Kimber will give a pre-concert lecture exploring the development of works by women artists and the barriers they faced. General admission tickets to the Friday, June 23, concert are $20; $10 for students. They are available at the Riverside Theatre box office, by calling (319) 259-7099, or emailing boxoffice@riversidetheatre.org.

Centering Women’s Perspectives
2023-06-22 19:30 | Trinity Episcopal Church, 320 E. College St, Iowa City, IA, United States
Thursday’s concert, Centering Women’s Perspectives, will feature myriad contemporary female composers, incorporating perspectives from a collection of Western and non-Western musical traditions. The program aims to re-examine musical and literary hierarchies by presenting string quartets of oral- based storytelling songs from Mali, Indian Ragas, and melodies based on Iranian poetry. Composers represented on this concert include Caroline Shaw, Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté, Jessie Montgomery, Aftab Darvishi, Reena Esmail, and MusicIC’s own Tricia Park. This concert will be presented at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 22, at Trinity Episcopal Church (320 E College Street), and is free and open to the public.

Caroline Shaw and Marilynne Robinson, In Conversation
2023-06-21 19:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
On Wednesday, June 21, at 7 p.m., MusicIC will present a pre-recorded conversation between Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and essayist, Marilynne Robinson and Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award–winning composer Caroline Shaw, moderated by MusicIC’s Founding Artist Director Tricia Park. The women will discuss Shaw’s string quartet Three Essays, the first movement of which was written to mimic Robinson’s writing. Segments of the string quartet will be performed live, in tandem with the conversation. Three Essays was a 2023 Grammy Award-winner, as part of the Attacca Quartet’s album Evergreen, which won Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance. The conversation will be free and open to the public and will be presented in Meeting Room A at the Iowa City Public Library (123 S. Linn St.).
