http://www.writinguniversity.uiowa.edu en lauren-haldeman@uiowa.edu Copyright 2009 2009-11-19T20:57:00-06:00 http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/entry/writing_the_world/ This University of Iowa Graduate College article highlights the International Writing Program and its director Christopher Merrill: "At age 6, Christopher Merrill began a brief but lucrative career as a newspaper publisher. His first story was about a young girl who shared the same wing of the hospital as he did and was dying of leukemia. "I remember writing a story about her. I sold them to my neighbors for one penny apiece," Merrill said. "I had to copy out each one, so it didn't last very long." While his newspaper career stopped before it ever really started, Merrill has never quit writing. From his office at Shambaugh House, where he has been director of The University of Iowa's International Writing Program since 2000, to a basement in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, during the Bosnian War, Merrill has used the written word to explain his life's journey." read more... Poetry, Faculty, International Writing Program 2009-11-19T20:57:00-06:00 http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/entry/poets_writers_magazine_ranks_iowa_1/ The University of Iowa creative writing programs in fiction, poetry and nonfiction were individually and collectively ranked number one by Poets & Writers magazine in their "Top Fifty" list of Master of Fine Arts programs. The list was compiled on the basis of a poll of more than 500 MFA current and prospective MFA applicants between October 2008 and April 2009. "All poll respondents were asked to list, along with their genre of interest, either the programs to which they planned to apply, or, if they were not yet applicants but expected to be in the future, which programs they believed were the strongest in the nation," Seth Abramson, wrote. Poets & Writers, Inc. is the primary source of information, support and guidance for creative writers. Founded in 1970, it is the nation's largest nonprofit literary organization serving poets, fiction writers and creative nonfiction writers. Read more... Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, Iowa Writers' Workshop 2009-10-29T20:50:00-06:00 http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/entry/grad_college_and_iwp_readings_through_second_life/ Alice Pung is nearly 10,000 miles away from home as an International Writing Program participant at the University of Iowa. But through Second Life (a 3-D virtual world where users can socialize, customize an avatar, connect and create using free voice and text chats) friends and family in her native Melbourne, Australia, had the opportunity to hear her read from her memoir, "Unpolished Gem" on Oct. 21. Students in the UI's School of Library of Information Science (SLIS) graduate program developed avatars -- characters that you can personalize and use when interacting with friends online -- for themselves and the writers, and coordinated the readings with the avatars at the main library. SLIS students will be hosting another Second Life presentation at 2 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30, with IWP participants Yasser Abdel Latif of Egypt and Maxine Case of South Africa reading from their work. Representatives of the UI's Virtual Writing University are helping produce the events. Read more... International Writing Program, New Media, UI Libraries 2009-10-28T18:35:00-06:00 http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/entry/ui_press_marks_150th_anniversary_of_leaves_of_grass_with_facsimile_edition/ The University of Iowa Press will release "Leaves of Grass, 1860: The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition" this autumn in honor of the 150th Anniversary of the collection's publication. This anniversary edition will include not only a facsimile reproduction of the original 1860 volume but also an introduction by antebellum historian and Whitman scholar Jason Stacy -- a faculty member at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville -- that situates Whitman in 19th-century America as well as annotations that provide detailed historical context for Whitman's poems. The book is part of the ongoing Iowa Whitman Series that celebrates and explores his influence on modern and contemporary writers in America and around the world. Robert Roper, author of "Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War," wrote, "The University of Iowa Press continues its indispensable service to Whitman scholarship with this new edition of the 1860 'Leaves of Grass.' Jason Stacy refrains from calling the 1860 edition the greatest of all the editions that Whitman published in his lifetime, so we will have to do it for him: Those that came before were smaller, while those that came after represent fallings-away from this towering and encompassing enchantment, the greatest book yet from an American poet." read more... Poetry, UI Press 2009-10-19T16:44:00-06:00 http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/entry/live_discussions_on_the_writing_university_website_oct_14th_and_15th/ The Writing University website hosted two live online discussions this week. Our first discussion, with Ida Beam distinguished Visiting Professor Eavan Boland, took place at 10 AM on Wed., Oct 14th. Boland discussed the process of writing, literature in an international community, as well as other literary topics. Read the archive of the Eavan Boland chat The second live discussion, with the University of Iowa International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill and UI Professor Emeritus Marvin Bell, took place at 1 PM on Thurs., Oct 15th. Bell and Merrill discussed their new collection "7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book" and other literary topics. Read the archive of the Marvin Bell and Christopher Merrill chat Poetry, Faculty, International Writing Program, Iowa Writers' Workshop Domestic Violence (2007) and New Collected Poems (2008), both with W.W. Norton. Her awards include the Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award. She is on the board of the Irish Arts Council, a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and on the advisory board of the International Writers Center at Washington University. She lives in Stanford, California, where she is professor of English at Stanford University and director of the creative writing program.]]> 2009-10-08T20:57:00-06:00 http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/entry/announcing_the_iowa_review_design_contest/ The Iowa Review will enter its 40th year of publication in 2010. To mark this milestone, the Iowa Review is holding a competition to redesign their cover. The new look will be implemented beginning with the April 2010 issue. The new magazine will have dimensions of 8 inches tall by 6.5 inches wide, with 4-inch French flaps and a spine of approximately one-half inch. Entrants are asked to create a design that will accommodate a changing central image and thematic emphasis. Submissions should be made via email as PDF attachments of no larger than 2 MB. Entries must include: Front and back covers, spine, and French flaps with the aforementioned measurements. The name “The Iowa Review,” either accompanying an image-based logo or as a logotype of its own. Space for a bar code. Cover price. Volume and issue numbers. Date of issue. Some indication of what is inside the current issue (e.g., authors, subjects, etc.) Full Guidelines (PDF) If you live in or near Iowa City, Prairie Lights Bookstore offers a wide selection of major literary magazines for browsing, including The Iowa Review. The winning entry will receive $1,000, as well as acknowledgment in every issue in which the designer’s work is used. The new print design will be coordinated with the redesign of The Iowa Review’s website, which also will launch in April 2010. To enter, please submit your PDF to iowa-review@uiowa.edu with “Design Contest” in the subject line. Questions may also be sent to this address. All entries must be received by October 19, 2009. The winner will be announced November 1. Full Guidelines (PDF) 2009-10-05T16:54:00-06:00 http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/entry/new_ui_press_anthology_traces_influence_of_wallace_stevens/ "Visiting Wallace: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Wallace Stevens," edited by Dennis Barone and James Finnegan, with a foreword by Alan Filreis, is the first anthology of poems, by a full range of poets, inspired by Stevens's life and work. The newly released work is available this autumn from the University of Iowa Press. Contributors include John Ashbery, John Berryman, Robert Bly, Robert Creeley, Annie Finch, Forrest Gander, Dana Gioia, Peter Gizzi, Edward Hirsch, Richard Howard, Susan Howe, Donald Justice, Ann Lauterbach, Robert Lowell, James Merrill, Marianne Moore, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, David St. John, Carl Sandburg, Ravi Shankar, Mark Strand, William Carlos Williams and Charles Wright. Barone, who teaches at St. Joseph College, is the author or editor of numerous books. Finnegan is an executive with Lee & Mason Financial Services in Connecticut. Filreis is the Kelly Professor of English and director of the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. Poetry, Faculty, UI Press 2009-09-30T15:35:01-06:00 http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/entry/ui_center_for_the_book_professor_awarded_2009_macarthur_genius_grant/ Former director of the University of Iowa Center for the Book and UI adjunct professor Tim Barrett has been named a 2009 MacArthur Fellow, one of 24 recipients in the annual award. The founding director of the papermaking facilities at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, Barrett, 59, said the grant means more research into how paper was made centuries ago, further unlocking the secrets of the process. "It's hard to get research funds because I'm not in a traditional field," he said. Besides that, he said, the grant will help him pay tribute to those craftsmen who, for a variety of reasons, never wrote down how they made paper. "I'm really eager to see that they not be forgotten," he said. The award gives Barrett $500,000 over 5 years and frees him to pursue his craft and research agenda. The Center for the Book is extraordinarily proud of Barrett and congratulate him on this much deserved recognition. Two former Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty members Heather McHugh and Debbie Eisenberg have also received MacArthur Genius grants this year. Heather McHugh composes rich verse that embraces such wordplay as puns, rhymes, and syntactical, exploring the human condition. From 1999 to 2006, she was Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Debbie Eisenberg crafts distinctive portraits of American life in tales of striking precision and moral depth. Her additional works include Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), and All Around Atlantis (1997). Read more.. More information about the award, visit the MacArthur Foundation website. For the The New York Times article on the awards, click here. Faculty, UI Center for the Book 2009-09-23T14:54:01-06:00 http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/entry/book_reviews_glueck_kidder_westlake/ Recently The New York Times Sunday Book Review has featured reviews of work by several authors affiliated with the University of Iowa, including Tracy Kidder, Louise Glück and Donald E. Westlake. Read the articles here: Against the Odds >> Tracy Kidder's "Strength in What Remains" Nothing Remains of Love >> Louise Glück's "A Village Life" Dortmunder’s Farewell >> Donald E. Westlake's "Get Real" Alumni, Fiction, Poetry 2009-09-17T20:51:02-06:00 http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/index.php/main/entry/iwp_alum_wins_prestigious_struga_poetry_evenings_award/ Slovenian poet and International Writing Program alum Tomaž Šalamun received the 2009 award for best poetic achievement at this year's Struga Poetry Evenings festival. Since 1962, the Struga Poetry Evenings have been held in honor of the Miladinov brothers in Struga, Macedonia. It is one of the oldest, largest, and most renowned poetry festivals in the world. The 48th Struga Poetry Evenings (SPE) opened August 20th, in Struga with a ceremony that included a traditional recital of the poem T'ga za jug (Longing for The South), a concert by pianist Simon Trpceski and the international poetry recital named "Poetry Meridians". Salamun planted a tree in the Park of Poetry and held a press conference. Šalamun's poetry was described by festival director Danilo Kocevski as "a kind of rebellion against cliches, search for new space of the poetry language and expression. Close to everyday life, linguistically open, communicative and simple, but also complex, metaphysically deep, revealing strong deep, unexpected vaults of human existence." Tomaž Šalamun was born in Zagreb, Croatia, raised in Koper, Slovenia, and now makes his home in Ljubljana. He has published 25 volumes of poems in Slovenia and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. The Selected Poems Of Tomaž Šalamun, edited and in large part translated by Charles Simic, was the poet's debut collection in English, brought out in 1988 as part of Ecco Press's prestigious Modern European Poetry series. It was followed by The Shepherd, The Hunter (Pedernal, 1992), The Four Questions Of Melancholy (White Pine Press, 1997), Feast (Harcourt, 2000), and The Book for My Brother (Harvest Books, 2006). He was a participant in the University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 1987. Read more... Poetry, International Writing Program 2009-09-10T20:36:00-06:00