Hatice Açıkgöz

Hatice Açıkgöz, fiction writer, poet, and editor from Germany is the author of two books: the short story collection Ein oktopus hat drei herzen [An Octopus Has Three Hearts] and the poetry collection Fancy immigrantin: ein poetisches tagebuch [Fancy Immigrants]. They are the recipient of the Raus! Nur Raus! stipend of the city of Hamburg, and are currently working on their debut novel, which explores the rise of fascism in modern Germany. Açıkgöz is a fall 2024 Writer-in-Residence at the International Writing Program.

Panel Discussion: Politics, October 19 @ 1:00 pm at the Iowa City Senior Center

Corban Addison

Corban Addison is the international bestselling author of four novels, A Walk Across the Sun, The Garden of Burning Sand, The Tears of Dark Water, and A Harvest of Thorns, and one work of narrative nonfiction, Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial. His books have been published in more than twenty-five countries and have won multiple awards. They address some of today’s most pressing issues of justice and human rights.

Corban holds a law degree from the University of Virginia and an engineering degree from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. After completing a judicial clerkship, he spent six years trying cases in the courtroom before turning to writing full-time. He is a supporter of numerous causes, including environmental justice and the abolition of modern slavery. He lives with his wife and children in Virginia.

The Fall 2024 One Community, One Book selection is Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial by Corban Addison. This event will be hosted in person at Old Brick, 26 E. Market Street Iowa City. This event is free and open to the public and sponsored by the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights, Hubbell Environmental Law Initiative, and the Iowa City Book Festival. Doors will open at 2:30 p.m. Author Keynote will begin at 3:00 p.m. and will last approximately 75 minutes. Author book signing will occur immediately following the lecture.

Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial, October 20 @ 3:00 p.m. at Old Brick

Yassin Adnan

Yassin Adnan, poet, fiction writer, editor, and television presenter from Morocco, is the author of six poetry collections, three short story collections, one novel, and one book about travel. The novel, Hot Maroc, was published in English by Syracuse University Press in 2021. Adnan serves as president of the Marrakech English Book Festival and as a member of the board of trustees of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The founder of two literary magazines, he has also hosted two cultural television programs, one radio show, and one podcast. He is the editor of various titles, including the anthology Marrakech Noir (2018). Adnan is a fall 2024 Writer-in-Residence at the International Writing Program.

Panel Discussion: A Sense of Place II, October 19 @ 4:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center.

Lisa Allen-Agostini

Lisa Allen-Agostini, fiction writer, poet, and editor from Trinidad and Tobago, is the author of the historical noir novella Death in the Dry River (2024), the young adult novel Home Home (2020), and the domestic noir novel The Bread the Devil Knead (2021), which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2022. She is currently working on a memoir in poetry and a novel set in the world of steelpan, which is the national instrument of her homeland. Allen-Agostini is a fall 2024 Writer-in-residence at the International Writing Program.

International Writing Program Panel: Balancing Life as an Artist, October 18 @ 12:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Jarod K. Anderson

Jarod K. Anderson has three best-selling collections of nature poetry, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest, Love Notes from the Hollow Tree, and Leaf Litter. His memoir Something in the Woods Loves You (Timber Press/Hachette 2024) explores his lifelong struggle with depression through a lens of love and gratitude for the natural world. Jarod created and voices The CryptoNaturalist podcast, a scripted audio-fiction show about real adoration for imaginary wildlife.

Jarod has gained a large audience (over 250K followers) across social media platforms with his vivid appreciations of nature and his open, vulnerable discussions of mental health. He has had an eclectic career, ranging from teaching college English courses after earning his MA in literature, to managing marketing and events for academic and ecological nonprofits. He lives in Ohio between a park and a cemetery.

• Something in the Woods Loves You, October 19 @ 1:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library
• Panel Discussion: A Sense of Place II, October 19 @ 4:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center

Anna Barker

Professor Anna Barker teaches in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Russian Program and in the UI Tippie College of Business Marketing Program on topics ranging from Tolstoy to Barbie. Her current courses include Introduction to Russian Culture, Russian Literature in Translation, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and Hey Barbie, I Like Your Style – AND Substance: The Archetypal Genius of a Blockbuster.

In 2021, in collaboration with the UI Libraries Special Collections, Professor Barker curated the exhibition “From Revolutionary Outcast to a Man of God: Dostoevsky at 200” which attracted over 6,000 visitors. Her fall 2024 Substack commentary is dedicated to the 160th anniversary of Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground” (1864) and its impact on the composition of “Crime and Punishment” (1866).

Since 2020, Professor Barker’s online tutorials examining the intersection of literature, history, and culture in classics such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, Paradise Lost, Madame Bovary, Les Misérables, War and Peace, and Brothers Karamazov reached over 7,500 readers around the globe. Her monthly column “Anna’s Thinking Cap” dedicated to Iowa’s French and Napoleonic past is published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen.

• From Peter the Great to Napoleon the Lesser: Dostoevsky and the Great Men of History, October 15 @ 4:30 pm at the Iowa City Public Library
• Taxi Driver with Notes from Underground, October 15 @ 6:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Ari Berman

Ari Berman is the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at Type Media Center. He’s the author of Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction) and Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post and Rolling Stone, and he is a frequent commentator on MSNBC and NPR. He’s won the Sidney Hillman Foundation Prize for Magazine Journalism and an Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media. He lives in New Paltz, New York.

• Panel Discussion: Politics, October 19 @ 1:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center
• Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It, October 19 @ 2:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center

S. Toriano Berry

S. Toriano Berry is a professor emeritus at Howard University’s Film department. He has worked on a number of films, including the award-winning short, “Rich,” in which he wrote, produced and directed as well as starred. He directed “Noh Matta Wat!,” the first Belizean dramatic television series.

Film Screening: Racialism and the Media, October 18 @ 5:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Venise Berry

Venise Berry is a professor in Journalism and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. She is the author of three novels — So Good, An African American Love Story, All of Me, A Voluptuous Tale, and Colored Sugar Water — and nonfiction works that include The Historical Dictionary of African American Film and The 50 Most Influential Black Films.

Film Screening: Racialism and the Media, October 18 @ 5:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Hannah Bonner

Hannah Bonner is a writer, film programmer, and educator. She is a 2023-2024 National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critics Fellow, the Poetry Editor for Brink, and a CLAS Postgraduate Visiting Writer in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Iowa. She currently splits her time between Iowa and Philadelphia. Another Woman (EastOver Press 2024) is her first book. 

Poetry Reading: Perry Janes, Anna Morrison and Hannah Bonner, October 19 @ 2:30 p.m. at FilmScene at The Chauncey

Tisa Bryant

Tisa Bryant is the author of Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), a collection of hybrid essays on black presences in film, literature and visual art. She is co-editor of the cross-referenced journal of narrative possibility, The Encyclopedia Project, and co-editor, with Ernest Hardy, of War Diaries, an anthology on black gay men’s desire and survival, published in 2010 by AIDS Project Los Angeles, and a finalist for a 2010 LAMBDA literary award. Her essays have appeared in exhibition catalogs for visual artists Laylah Ali, Jaime Cortez, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Suné Woods and Cauleen Smith, and is forthcoming in the anthology Letters to the Future: Black Experimental Women Writers, and in a catalogue of site-specific art from The New School. She has done numerous presentations of cinema essays, most recently at ALOUD’s “School of Prince” event at the Los Angeles Public Library, and at “Speak Nearby,” a symposium of text and performance inspired by Trinh T. Minh-ha. Tisa Bryant was a commissioned writer/researcher for Radio Imagination, Clockshop’s year-long Los Angeles celebration of science fiction writer Octavia Butler, in collaboration with the Huntington Library in Pasadena, which houses the Octavia E. Butler Papers. She is working on The Curator, a novel of Black female subjectivity and imagined cinema. Residual, a meditation on grief, longing, desire and archival research, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books.

Unexplained Presence, October 20 @ 4:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Ezra Claytan Daniels

Ezra Claytan Daniels is a mixed-race (black/white) writer and illustrator. His critically acclaimed graphic novel series, The Changers, began a unique career peppered with collaborative multimedia projects ranging from video games to animation to feature documentaries. Ezra will talk about his projects, which include Upgrade Soul and “We Are Not Alone,” the short comic that is the basis for a film that will be shown during the Refocus Film Festival.

Upgrade Soul and “We Are Not Alone” October 18 @ 4:30 p.m. at Daydreams Comics

Josh Cowen

Josh Cowen is Professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University, and an author on topics related to education politics, school choice, and culture wars in the United States. In addition to each of the major academic outlets in his research field, his popular writing has appeared in outlets such as The Conversation, the Dallas Morning News, the Detroit Free Press, The Hechinger Report, the Houston Chronicle, The New Republic, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, The Tennessean, the Washington Spectator and more. He lives in mid-Michigan with his family. His new book is The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.

The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, October 19 @ 11:30 a.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Jennifer Croft

Jennifer Croft won the Man Booker International Prize for her translation from Polish of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. She is the author of Homesick, a Saroyan Prize winner, and numerous pieces in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Paris Review Daily, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literary Studies from Northwestern University and an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa. Her debut novel is The Extinction of Irena Rey, which tells of eight translators who arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace. The result is a hilarious, thought-provoking tale that is a brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language.

The Extinction of Irena Rey, October 19 @ 10:30 a.m. at Prairie Lights Books

Stuart Dybek

Stuart Dybek is the author of five books of fiction--Ecstatic Cahoots, Paper Lantern, I Sailed with Magellan, The Coast of Chicago, and Childhood and Other Neighborhoods–as well as two collections of poetry, Brass Knuckles and Streets in Their Own Ink. Dybek is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award, an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Whiting Writers’ Award, four O. Henry Awards, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is distinguished writer-in-residence at Northwestern University.

• Reading, October 14 @ 7:00 p.m. at Prairie Lights Books
• Literary Legends: Tracy Kidder in conversation with Stuart Dybek, October 15 @ 7:30 p.m. at the Iowa Memorial Union

Sarah Elgatian

Sarah Elgatian is a mixed-identity writer whose work blurs the lines of genre. Among other places, her work has appeared in Crab Fat, Beholder Magazine, and print anthologies including the Iowa Writers’ House We The Interwoven. She works at the Midwest Writing Center where she hosts workshop groups and an educational web series. Sarah likes bright colors, dark coffee, loud music, and long sentences.

Panel Discussion: Publishing for Beginners, October 20 @ 1:00 p.m. at MERGE

James Fitzmaurice

James Fitzmaurice has written a number of award-winning screenplays. They include an imagined tale of a dream Barack Obama experiences in which he is plagued by the beat poet Charles Bukowski. In another screenplay, the novelist Raymond Carver navigates a love story while living in 1960s Iowa City, a place populated by Theory Zombies. In yet another script which is set in the 1660s, Margaret Cavendish (who lived in what became the Sheffield postal code area) tries to convince a famous religious writer that witches and devils do not exist. An ex-pat American himself, Jim taught at Northern Arizona University for many years before retiring to the UK, where has been associated with the University of Sheffield. The children he raised in Sheffield are now grown and have flown the nest. This is his first novel.

Hobgoblin Gennel, October 19 @ 2:30 p.m. at Shambaugh Auditorium, University of Iowa Main Library

Forrest Gander

Forrest Gander’s book Be With was awarded the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Concerned with the way we are revised and translated in encounters with the foreign, his book Core Samples from the World was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The author of numerous other books of poetry, including Redstart: An Ecological Poetics and Science & Steepleflower, Gander also writes novels (As a Friend; The Trace), essays (A Faithful Existence) and translates. Recent translations include It Must Be a Misunderstanding by Coral Bracho, Names and Rivers by Shuri Kido, and Then Come Back: the Lost Neruda Poems. His most recent anthologies are Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin American (selected by Raúl Zurita) and Panic Cure: Poems from Spain for the 21st Century.

Gander co-edited Lost Roads Publishers with CD Wright for twenty years, soliciting, editing, and publishing books by more than thirty writers, including Michael Harper, Kamau Brathwaite, Arthur Sze, Fanny Howe, Frances Mayes, Steve Stern, Zuleyka Benitez, and René Char.

• Panel Discussion: Sense of Place, October 19 @ 10:00 a.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center
• Mojave Ghost, October 19 @ 1:30 p.m. at Prairie Lights Books

Mackie Garrett

Mackie Garrett is a poet, artist, and caregiver based in Iowa City. His poems have appeared in IODINE POETRY REVIEW, PLAINSONGS, SPOON RIVER POETRY REVIEW, SLANT, and other publications. Mackie founded 508 Press, a collaborative micropress specializing in limited edition poetry publications, in 2017. With various collaborators, he designs and letterpress prints poetry zines, chapbooks, greeting cards, and posters. The 508 Press reading series combines poetry, experimental music, and poetry zines, and it was named Best Reading Series in eastern Iowa by Little Village in 2021.  He has taught literature, creative writing, and English as a Second Language at schools, community colleges, and universities in the U.S., Jamaica, and China. He facilitates letterpress printing workshops at the Iowa City Press Cooperative.

• Typedancing, October 18 @ 2:00 p.m. at the Pedmall Weatherdance Fountain Stage
• Panel Discussion: Publishing for Beginners, October 20 @ 1:00 p.m. at MERGE

Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg is a poet, teacher, writer, and painter. A student of Zen Buddhism for 24 years, she trained intensively with Katagiri Roshi for 12 years, and is ordained in the Order of Interbeing with Thich Nhat Hanh. Natalie Goldberg teaches writing workshops nationally based on the methods presented in Writing Down the Bones. Her other books include Wild Mind; Long Quiet Highway; Banana Rose; and Living Color.

• Panel Discussion: Politics, October 19 @ 1:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center
• Writing on Empty, October 19 @ 3:00 p.m. at Prairie Lights Books
• A Lunch and Conversation with Natalie Goldberg, October 20 @ 1-3:00 p.m. at Porchlight Literary Arts Center. (Ticketed event)

Catarina Gomes

Catarina Gomes, nonfiction and fiction writer from Portugal, is the author of four nonfiction books, most recently Um dedo borrado de tinta [A Finger Smudged with Ink] (2024). Her debut novel, Terrinhas [Little Lands] (2022), received the Agustina Bessa-Luís Revelation Literary Prize, and three of her books are included in the Portuguese government’s National Reading Plan. Gomes worked as a journalist at the daily newspaper Público for nineteen years, was a two-time finalist for the Gabriel García Marquez Journalism Prize, and was awarded the King of Spain Prize in 2016. Gomes is a fall 2024 Writer-in-Residence at the International Writing Program.

Panel Discussion: Sense of Place, October 19 @ 10:00 a.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center

Nancy Miller Gomez

Nancy Miller Gomez grew up in Kansas, but currently lives in Santa Cruz, California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, The Adroit Journal, Shenandoah, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Massachusetts Review, River Styx, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology and her chapbook, Punishment, was published as part of the Rattle chapbook series. She co-founded an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men and has taught poetry in Salinas Valley State Prison, the Santa Cruz County Jails and the Juvenile Hall.

Inconsolable Objects – Reading and Workshop, October 16 @ 7:00 p.m. at Porchlight Literary Arts Center

Priya Hein

Priya Hein, fiction and nonfiction writer from Mauritius, debuted in 2023 with the novel Riambel, which won the Prix Athéna and was recognized as a notable African book for that year by the magazine Brittle Paper. The manuscript had previously won the Prix Jean Fanchette in 2021. Hein was nominated by the National Library of Mauritius for the 2017 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and was shortlisted for the Prix de l’Atelier Littéraire in 2021 and the Miles Morland Scholarship in 2023. In 2019, she was a mentee in the International Writing Program’s Women’s Creative Mentorship Project. She is currently working on her second novel. Hein is a fall 2024 Writer-in-Residence at the International Writing Program.

Panel Discussion: A Sense of Place II, October 19 @ 4:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center

Sam Helmick

Sam Helmick is the American Library Association Council 2024-2025 president-elect. They have served as the Iowa City Public Library Community & Access Services Coordinator since September 2020. Sam is responsible for the Help Desk, Bookmobile, as well as for PR and Marketing initiatives. Preceding employment in Iowa City, Sam started their career at the Burlington Public Library in 2008 as the Youth Services Library Assistant, and in 2010 they became the Public Services Manager.

That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America, October 19 @ 10:00 a.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Putra Hidayatullah

Putra Hidayatullah, nonfiction and fiction writer, art curator, and educator from Indonesia, is the author of a short story collection entitled Kebun Jagal [The Butcher’s Garden] (2023). His nonfiction writing has appeared in Artlink, Curatography, The Jakarta Post, and Check-In, while his fiction has been published in InterSastra, Porch Litmag, and Koran Tempo, among others. He served as a harvester for the international art exhibition documenta fifteen in Germany. He is currently writing a novel. Hidayatullah is a Fall 2024 Writer-in-Residence at the International Writing Program.

Panel discussion: Balancing Life as an Artist, October 18 @ 12:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Perry Janes

Perry Janes is a writer and filmmaker from metro Detroit, Michigan. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, his written work has appeared in POETRY, Electric Literature, Poem-a-Day, Zyzzyva, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Subtropics, West Branch, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Adroit Journal, The Missouri Review, and others. He earned his MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College, and his BA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he was a 5-time recipient of the Hopwood Award. His debut collection of poems FIND ME WHEN YOU’RE READY is forthcoming (2024) from Curbstone Books.

Poetry Reading: Perry Janes, Anna Morrison and Hannah Bonner, October 19 @ 2:30 p.m. at FilmScene at The Chauncey

Amanda Jones

Amanda Jones has been an educator for 23 years, at the same middle school she attended as a child. She has served as President of the Louisiana Association of School Librarians and won numerous awards for her work in school libraries, including School Library Journal Librarian of the Year. A sought-after keynote speaker, Amanda is a frequent volunteer for state and national library associations, as well as a co-founder of the Livingston Parish Library Alliance and founding member of Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship. She lives in Livingston Parish, Louisiana.

• That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America, October 19 @ 10:00 a.m. at the Iowa City Public Library
• Panel Discussion: Politics, October 19 @ 1:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center

Nurit Kasztelan

Nurit Kasztelan, poet, fiction writer, editor, and bookseller from Argentina, is the author of the novel Tanto (2023), which was the recipient of an honorable mention for the National Award for Literature from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, and the poetry collections Movimientos Incorpóreos (2007), Lógica de los accidentes (2013), and Después (2018), which was published in English by Cardboard House Press as Awaiting Major Events (2021). She attended the Campo Garzon residency in Uruguay in 2022. Kasztelan is a fall 2024 Writer-in-Residence at the International Writing Program.

Panel Discussion: Sense of Place, October 19 @ 10:00 a.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center

Tracy Kidder

The author of nonfiction classics such as The Soul of a New Machine and Mountains Beyond Mountains, Kidder is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Iowa. In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize winner, he also is the recipient of the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other honors.

Literary Legends: Tracy Kidder in conversation with Stuart Dybek, October 15 @ 7:30 p.m. at the Iowa Memorial Union

Daryl Li 李振宏

Daryl LI 李振宏, nonfiction and fiction writer from Singapore, is the author of two collections of creative nonfiction—The Inventors (2023) and Tenderly, Tenderly (2024)—as well as a forthcoming short story collection, Minor Illusions. He was a finalist for the Georgia Review Prose Prize, and his work has been longlisted for both the Australian Book Review’s Calibre Essay Prize and the same publication’s Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. In 2013, he received a Golden Point Award for a short story in the English category. He is currently at work on a full-length nonfiction project as well as an essay collection. Li is a fall 2024 Writer-in-Residence at the International Writing Program.

Panel discussion: Balancing Life as an Artist, October 18 @ 12:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Bruna Dantas Lobato

Bruna Dantas Lobato is a fiction writer and translator.

Her translation of The Words That Remain by Stênio Gardel won the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Other translations have received the English PEN Translates Award and the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and have been longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, the PEN Translation Prize, and the Republic of Consciousness Prize.

Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, is forthcoming in October 2024 from Grove Atlantic in the U.S, Companhia das Letras/PRH in Brazil (in her own translation into Portuguese), and İş Kültür in Turkey. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, A Public Space, and The Common, and has received support from MacDowell, Yaddo, Jentel, A Public Space, NYU, Disquiet International, and more.

Blue Light Hours, October 15 @ 6:00 p.m. at Prairie Lights Books

Nina Lohman

Originally from California, Nina lives in Iowa City and is the founder and publisher of Brink, a literary journal dedicated to hybrid and cross-genre writing. She serves as the Literary Programming Director for the Mission Creek Festival, an annual immersive music and literature festival honoring independent expression. A 2023 Iowa Artist Fellow, her writing has been supported by The Vermont Studio Center, The Sewanee Writers Conference, and The Iowa Arts Council. She is at work on a collection of micro-essays on the subject of release.

• Panel Discussion: Politics, October 19 @ 1:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center
• The Body Alone, October 19 @ 4:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Masonic Building

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens (she/her) went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in Iowa where she is landlocked. Her fifth, full length poetry collection, “Pool Parties” is now available from Unsolicited Press. She is the author of fifteen chapbooks. Some of her work appears in The Pinch, South Broadway Ghost Society, Cleaver, Zone 3, Slant, Yalobusha Review, and Grist. She is a member of the Iowa City Poetry Council. Find her online at jennifermacbainstephens.com/.

Panel Discussion: Publishing for Beginners, October 20 @ 1:00 p.m. at MERGE

Nicolás Medina Mora

Nicolás Medina Mora was born and raised in Mexico City. He has degrees from Yale University and the writing program of the University of Iowa, and has worked in New York City as a journalist at Reuters and BuzzFeed. His writing has appeared in The Nation, The New York Times, and n+1, where he won the 2023 n+1 Writers’ Fellowship for outstanding contributions. He currently lives in Mexico City, where he is a writer and editor for Revista Nexos.

• Panel Discussion: Who Do You Read? October 19 @ 2:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center
• América del Norte, October 19 @ 4:30 p.m. at  Prairie Lights Books

Christopher Merrill

Christopher Merrill has published eight collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, and On the Road to Lviv; many edited volumes and translations; and six books of nonfiction, among them, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, and Self-Portrait with Dogwood. His writings have been translated into nearly forty languages; his journalism appears widely; his honors include a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, numerous translation awards, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial and Ingram Merrill Foundations. As director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa since 2000, Merrill has conducted cultural diplomacy missions to more than fifty countries. He served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO from 2011-2018, and in April 2012 President Barack Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities.

After the Fact, October 19 @ 10:00 a.m. at the Iowa City Masonic Building

Anna Morrison

Anna is a Pushcart-nominated poet and filmmaker from Atlanta, Georgia with an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Anna’s first book of poems, Long Exposure, was published in the fall with Moon City Press. Her poems have recently appeared in Best American Poetry 2022, The Adroit Journal, EX/POST, and Brink and placed 3rd in Narrative’s 14th Annual Poetry Contest. Her writing and films deal with themes of familial grief and early motherhood. Anna is a Lecturer in Screenwriting Arts at the University of Iowa and co-edits Two Peach with Catherine Pond.

Poetry Reading: Perry Janes, Anna Morrison and Hannah Bonner, October 19 @ 2:30 p.m. at FilmScene at The Chauncey

Felipe Franco Munhoz

Felipe Franco Munhoz, fiction writer, poet, playwright and translator from Brazil, is the author of Dissoluções [Dissolutions] (2024), Lanternas ao nirvana [Lanterns to Nirvana] (2022), Identidades [Identities] (2018), and Mentiras [Lies] (2016). He has translated works by Ivan Turgenev, Samuil Marshak, and Alexander Pushkin. He is the recipient of a Santa Maddalena Foundation fellowship and residencies with Art Omi, Sangam House, and the Festival Artes Vertentes. Munhoz is a fall 2024 Writer-in-Residence at the International Writing Program.

Panel Discussion: A Sense of Place II, October 19 @ 4:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center

Chris Offutt

Chris Offutt is the author of two collections of short stories, three memoirs, and six novels. His books have been translated into twelve languages and won four international awards. His most recent work is the acclaimed Mick Hardin series from Grove-Atlantic. He also wrote screenplays for True Blood, Weeds, and Treme. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA grant, and a Lannan Fellowship. He received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for “prose that takes risks.” His work is included in many anthologies including Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Food Writing, and Modern American Memoirs. He has taught in a number of MFA programs including the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is professor emeritus at the University of Mississippi. He grew up in the hills of eastern Kentucky and lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

• Panel Discussion: Sense of Place, October 19 @ 10:00 a.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center
• Code of the Hills, October 19 @ 2:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Masonic Building

Tanya Rastogi 

Tanya Rastogi is the the 2024-25 Iowa Student Poet Ambassador. Rastogi is a student at Pleasant Valley High School in Bettendorf, Iowa. Her art and writing are published or forthcoming in several literary magazines including Gone Lawn, The Adroit Journal, Kalopsia Literary, and others. She is the founding editor of online journal The Seraphic Review. In 2023, she received a national Scholastic gold medal for her poem ‘Three Generations’.

In school, Tanya is heavily involved in the music department–she plays flute in band and is a member of choir and jazz choir. When she isn’t participating in some form of the arts, Tanya enjoys watching video essays and visiting cafes with her friends.

Poetry in Public Reading, October 20 @ 12:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Jesus “Chuy” Renteria

Jesus “Chuy” Renteria is an artist and author currently residing in Iowa City, IA. They were raised in West Liberty, a small town known for being Iowa’s first majority hispanic town. Chuy published We Heard It When We Were Young (University of Iowa Press, 2021) a memoir detailing his upbringing in this vibrant and complicated midwestern meatpacking community. His memoir was recommended on The Today Show, as well as being featured in The Chicago Review of Books and NPR.

Panel Discussion: Publishing for Beginners, October 20 @ 1:00 p.m. at MERGE

Marc Ribot

Marc Ribot, who the New York Times describes as “a deceptively articulate artist who uses inarticulateness as an expressive device,” has released 25 albums under his own name over a 40 – year career, exploring everything from the pioneering jazz of Albert Ayler to the Cuban son of Arsenio Rodríguez. His solo release, “ Silent Movies ” (Pi Recording 2010) has been described as a “down – in – mouth – near master piece” by the Village Voice and has landed on several Best of 2010 lists including the LA Times and critical praise across the board, and 2014 saw the monumental release: Marc Ribot Trio Live at the Village Vanguard (Pi Recordings), documenting Marc’s first headline and the return of Henry Grimes at the historical venue in 2012 and included on Best of 2014 lists such as Downbeat Magazine and NPR ’s 50 Favorites.

Unstrung: Rants & Stories of a Noise Guitarist, October 19 @ 4:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Megan Rosenbloom

Megan Curran Rosenbloom is Collection Strategies Librarian at UCLA Library in Los Angeles. Megan served as a medical librarian for many years, where she developed a keen interest in the history of medicine and rare books. She was founding President of the Southern California Society for the History of Medicine and continues to serve on board.

Megan Rosenbloom was the co-founder and director of Death Salon, the event arm of The Order of the Good Death, and a proponent of the Death Positive movement. She leads a research team called The Anthropodermic Book Project that aims to find the historic and scientific truths behind the world’s alleged books bound in human skin, or anthropodermic bibliopegy, and her bestselling debut book about this practice, titled Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin, was a New York Times Editors Choice and won the 2021 LAMPHHS Best Monograph Award. In a former life she was a journalist in Philadelphia and continues to write for both academic and non-academic publications.

Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin, October 16 @ 6:00 p.m. at Shambaugh Auditorium, University of Iowa Main Library

Pervin Saket

Pervin Saket, poet, novelist, and editor from India, is the author of the novel Urmila (2016), the poetry collection A Tinge of Turmeric (2009), and a series of ten biographies in verse for children. She won the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize in 2021 and was awarded the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive Fellowship the same year. Her most recent poetry manuscript was a finalist for the Gaudy Boy Prize and the Wheelbarrow Books Prize 2024. She works as an editor for academic textbooks, serves as the poetry editor for The Bombay Literary Magazine, and is currently writing her second novel. Saket is a fall 2024 Writer-in-Residence at the International Writing Program.

Panel Discussion: Sense of Place, October 19 @ 10:00 a.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center

Josh Sazon

Josh Sazon has done work primarily as a director, and occasionally as an actor, with a number of theater organizations in the area, including the Iowa City Community Theater, Dreamwell Theater, Run of the Mill Theater, the City Circle Acting Company of Coralville as well as the University of Iowa Department of Theater Arts. He has also produced and directed a number of productions with other organizations, including the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts, Oaknoll Retirement Residence, St. Thomas More Catholic church in Coralville and the St. Andrew Episcopal church in Iowa City.

It Can’t Happen Here, October 14 @ 6:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She spent seven years working in the Obama Administration on issues of homelessness and Native policy. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She currently teaches public policy at the University of Iowa. The Indian Card is her first book.

The Indian Card, October 16 @ 7:00 p.m. at Prairie Lights Books

Steve Semken

Steve Semken has run the Ice Cube Press since 1991. His constant mission has been: “Using the literary arts to better understand how we can best live in the Midwest.” To learn more subscribe to his new Substack column: Ice Cube Press: Publishing, Writing, and Smart Life Secrets

Panel Discussion: Publishing for Beginners, October 20 @ 1:00 p.m. at MERGE

Marguerite Sheffer

Marguerite (Maggie) Sheffer is a writer who lives in New Orleans. She is a Professor of Practice at Tulane University, where she teaches courses in design thinking and speculative fiction as tools for social change. Formerly, she taught English at the East Oakland School of the Arts, Castlemont High School, Life Academy, and GW Carver High School.

Her debut short story collection, The Man in the Banana Trees, was selected by judge Jamil Jan Kochai for the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and will be published in Fall 2024. Maggie is a founding member of Third Lantern Lit, a local writing collective, and the Nautilus and Wildcat Writing Groups. She received her MFA from Randolph College. She was a 2023 Veasna So Scholar in Fiction at The Adroit Journal, and was selected as a top-twenty-five finalist for Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers. Her story “Tiger on My Roof” was a finalist for the 2024 Chautauqua Janus Prize, which awards emerging writers’ short fiction with “daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations.”

• The Man in the Banana Trees, October 19 @ 11:30 a.m. at the Iowa City Masonic Building
• Panel Discussion: A Sense of Place II, October 19 @ 4:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center

John Ira Thomas

John Ira Thomas takes his metafictional TIRE series into the future and looks back at the same weird beliefs that continue to propel us. It’s 2038 and John Ira Thomas is nowhere to be found. A new, legally-mandated issue of TIRE magazine must be written.

TIRE Magazine 2038, October 18 @ 3:00 p.m. at Daydreams Comics

Chris Tse

Chris Tse, poet, editor, and nonfiction writer from New Zealand, is the author of the poetry collections How to Be Dead in a Year of Snakes (2014), HE’S SO MASC (2018), and Super Model Minority (2022), the latter of which was a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. He coedited Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (2021). In 2016, he received the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Tse is the current New Zealand Poet Laureate. Tse is a Fall 2024 writer-in-residence at the International Writing Program.

Panel Discussion: Who Do You Read? October 19 @ 2:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Senior Center

Willy Vlautin

Sharon Wahl

Mélanie Werder-Avilés

Elizabeth Willis

Nicholas Wong

Péter Závada