Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature

Prairie Lights: Ama Codjoe in conversation with Donika Kelly and Evie Shockley
2022-09-21 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A reading and conversation with Ama Codjoe in celebration of the release of her book Bluest Nude (Milkweed Press, 2022). Ama will be joined in conversation by Donika Kelly and Evie Shockley.
You can register for the event on Zoom here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_FckYI_QkQuqZ6g5uT0t_2w

Prairie Lights: Tom Montgomery Fate
2022-09-20 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A reading and conversation with Tom Montgomery Fate in celebration of the release of his book The Long Way Home: Detours and Discoveries (Ice Cube Press, 2022).

Prairie Lights: International Writing Program Sunday Reading Series
2022-09-18 16:00, 2022-09-11 16:00, 2022-09-04 16:00, 2022-08-28 16:00 - 17:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Hear some of this years’ International Writing Program residents read from their work. Readers TBA.

Prairie Lights: Joe Meno
2022-09-16 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A reading and conversation with Joe Meno in celebration of the release of his book Book of Extraordinary Tragedies.

Prairie Lights: William Kent Krueger
2022-09-15 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A reading and conversation with William Kent Krueger in celebration of the release of his book Fox Creek (Atria Books, 2022).

Prairie Lights: Sarah Derbew in conversation with Nell Irvin Painter
2022-09-14 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Professor Sarah Derbew will talk about her new book, Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity, with Professor Nell Irvin Painter, in a special event sponsored by the University of Iowa Department of History.
You can register for this online event HERE

Prairie Lights: Anthony Marra
2022-09-12 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A reading and conversation with Anthony Marra in celebration of the release of his book Mercury Pictures Presents (Random House, 2022).

Prairie Lights: Edward Carey
2022-09-09 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A reading and conversation with former Iowa Citian, International Writing Program Resident, and Iowa Writers’ Workshop Instructor, Edward Carey, in celebration of the release of his book Plagues and Pencils: A Year of Pandemic Sketches (University of Texas Press, 2022).

Prairie Lights: Belinda Huijuan Tang in conversation with Sanjena Sathian
2022-09-08 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A reading and conversation with Belinda Huijuan Tang in celebration of the release of her book A Map for the Missing. She will be joined in conversation by Sanjena Sathian.
You can register for this virtual event HERE

Sidekick Coffee & Books: FALL STORYTIME
2022-09-07 09:30 | Sidekick Coffee & Books, 1310 1/2 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Fall into a good story at Sidekick Coffee & Books!

Prairie Lights: Adria Bernardi in conversation with Katie Runde and Louisa Hall
2022-09-06 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A reading and conversation with Adria Bernardi in celebration of the release of her book Benefit Street. She will be joined in conversation by Katie Runde and Louisa Hall.
Register for this Zoom event HERE

Iowa City Poetry: WRITERS OPEN MIC
2022-09-04 16:00 - 17:00 | icpoetry.link/mic-zoom
An off-shoot of The Free Generative Writing Workshops, the Writers Open Mic welcomes writers of all genres and experience levels. Share 4-5 minutes of your original writing with an appreciative and supportive audience. You do not have to be a past participant of a Free Generative Writing workshop or an Iowa City Poetry workshop to take part. Email lafelleman@gmail.com to reserve your slot in the open mic line-up.

IWP Panel Discussion Series: Cultures in Conflict
2022-09-02 12:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
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.

Prairie Lights: Darius Stewart
2022-08-31 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A reading and conversation with Darius Stewart in celebration of the release of his book Intimacies in Borrowed Light (EastOver Press, 2022).

Discover Artist Grant Wood with the Cedar Rapids Opera
2022-08-27 17:00 | Univ. of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art, 160 W Burlington St, Iowa City, 52242, United States
Gather in the Stanley’s lobby for a special performance of selections from The Grant Wood Operas: Strokes of Genius by Iowa composers Robert Lindsay Nassif, Jean-Francois Charles, and Michael Ching, performed by Jessica Patel, Ian Butler, Élise DesChamps, Mitchell Widmer, Jean-François Charles, and Hsin-Hui Liu.
The concert will be preceded by a short introduction to the museum by director Lauren Lessing.

Prairie Lights: Sarah Thankam Mathews in conversation with Sanjena Sathian
2022-08-25 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Prairie Lights Virtual – Zoom
REGISTER HERE to attend this virtual event!
Writers’ Workshop Graduates Sarah Thankam Mathews and Sanjena Sathian, will talk about Mathews’ new novel, All This Could Be Different. Mathews will do also do a reading from the book. Described by Lithub as a “bildungsroman, an immigrant story, a hero’s journey not to be missed,” All This Could Be Different is also a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America.

Sidekick Coffee & Books: PARENTS’ BACK TO SCHOOL BASH
2022-08-23 10:30 | Sidekick Coffee & Books, 1310 1/2 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Join barre3 + Sidekick Coffee & Books for a morning just for the parents! Kids are back at school and we want to celebrate a summer well spent with movement, treats, and connections! We’ll start with 45-minutes of movement at barre3 with Maureen Beran to kickstart the academic year with self care. We’ll head to Sidekick afterwards for a mimosa, macaroons, and uninterrupted conversation! ​
This event will begin at 10:45am on Tuesday, August 23rd. Registration is required and space is limited.

Cheap Copies! DIY publishing with Mimeo, Hecto and Ditto
2022-08-22 18:00 - 21:00 | PS1 Close House, 538 S Gilbert St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
with Rich Dana
Mon Aug. 22 & Tues Aug. 23 , 6-9pm
at PS1 Close (538 S. Gilbert)
pay-what-you-can: $15-100
Visit http://www.publicspaceone.com/events/cheap-copies to register
Before social media, even before xerox-copied zines and flyers, marginalized communities used simple copying techniques– hectography (gelatin printing) mimeography (stencil printing) and spirit duplication (alcohol transfers, also known as “ditto”)– to make their voices heard. From political activists struggling for independence in India to the early gay rights activists in New York City, and from the dissident writers of Samizdat (self publishing) in the Soviet Union to the striking migrant farm workers of Southern California, these analog copiers were used to spread the word through words and pictures in the 20th century.
Mostly forgotten, I have been studying and recreating these techniques for the last 10 years. In 2021, I self-published a book called “Cheap Copies! As a DIY guide for those who want to reconnect with the non-digital world of analog communication.
This summer, I’m setting out across the US on a series of in-person workshops to demonstrate these low-cost techniques and how contemporary artists and writers can use them to publish editions of zines, chapbooks, prints, and flyers. We’ll begin by discussing the history of office copying technology and how marginalized creators adopted these techniques in the early 20th century. Next, we’ll dive into demos of making master sheets, operation of vintage copiers, and creating our own simple copiers from off-the-shelf materials. Finally, participants will have full access to all of the materials and equipment to create their own editions with guidance from the instructor (me!) Participants will leave with the ability to create their own prints with miminal investment and without a studio.

A Hub, a Network, an Archive: 55 Years of International Writers in Iowa City
2022-08-22 - 2022-12-16 | University of Iowa Main Library Gallery, 125 W Washington St, Iowa City, IA, United States
This exhibit, which is open August 22 – December 16, 2022, celebrates the 55th anniversary of the International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa. This program has brought close to 1,600 writers from more than 150 countries to the UI since 1967, and this exhibition tells the story of the IWP’s genesis, its role in cultural diplomacy, Iowa City as a site of literary praxis and global networking, and the images of Iowa that writers have carried home with them through their work. Curators Nataša Ďurovičová and Lisa Gardinier dove into Special Collections & Archives materials, including the Paul Engle Papers, the International Writing Program Records, the Toothpaste/Coffee House Press Records, and more while researching for the exhibition. Also included are items from the UI Libraries circulating collection, IWP’s Shambaugh House, and friends of the IWP in addition to large portraits of writers by photographer Thomas Langdon.

508 Poem Zine Reading Series: Cory Hutchinson-Reuss
2022-08-21 19:30 | PS1 N Gilbert St., 229 N. Gilbert St., Iowa City, IA, 52245, United States
508 Press presents the Poem Zine Reading Series
Poet Cory Hutchinson-Reuss
Sounds by Antifahorn
in the PS1 North Art Gardens
free poem zines!

Summer Storytime at Sidekick Coffee & Books
2022-08-02 09:30 - 10:30 | Sidekick Coffee & Books, 1310 1/2 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Join Sidekick for stories every Tuesday and Thursday this summer at 9:30 a.m.

The Scarlet Boudoir (The Writers’ Rooms)
2022-07-27 18:00 - 20:00 | Cedar Rapids Public Library, 450 Fifth Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids, IA, 52401, United States
This is our romance Room led by the incredible Jolene Buchheit in person at the Cedar Rapids Public Library here from 6-7:30pm. Can’t wait to see you there! Every fourth Wednesday, 6 p.m.-8 p.m.

The Violet Realm (The Writers’ Rooms)
2022-07-26 18:00 - 20:00 | online
This is our Fantasy/Sci-fi Room led by Erin Casey. We’ve returned to meeting virtually on Facebook here from 6-8 PM. Can’t wait to see you there! The Violet Realm meets every 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month.
