Fall Residency Aug 19–Nov 7, 2017
The World’s Oldest and Largest Multinational Writing Residency Join us for Weekly Readings, Screenings, and Panels, Plus Special Events Meet 35 International Writers
Staff Director Christopher Merrill Associate Director Hugh Ferrer Editor Nataša Ďurovičová Senior Program Officer Kelly Bedeian Fall Residency Coordinator Kathleen Maris Paltrineri Communications Coordinator Donna Brooks Distance Learning Coordinator Susannah Shive Youth Programs Coordinator Cate Dicharry 50th Anniversary Coordinator Alice Gribbin Housing Coordinator Mary Nazareth Senior Program Advisor Peter Nazareth Fall Residency Assistant Kelsi Vanada Fall Residency Transportation Assistant Madison Colquette Administrative Services Coordinator Meggan Fisher Accountant Angela Dickey ICRU Fellows Ashley Chong Cindy Garcia Claire Jacobson Emily Vaughan
IWP Fall Residency guide designed and produced by Little Village Creative Services
5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y • FA L L R E S I D E N C Y The INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM (IWP) is the oldest and largest multinational writing residency in the world. With a fifty-year tradition of excellence, the IWP annually brings outstanding authors from around the world to the University of Iowa. Since 1967, over 1400 writers from more than 150 countries have taken part in the Fall Residency. The goal of the IWP is to provide authors a one-of-a-kind intercultural opportunity, and the time and space to write, read, translate, study, conduct research, travel, give readings, stage work, and become part of the vibrant literary and academic community at the university and in Iowa City, the only U.S. city designated as a UNESCO City of Literature. In 2017, the IWP celebrates its 50th anniversary and will bring together 35 of the world’s emerging and established writers to participate in the Fall Residency. Over the course of twelve weeks, aside from working on their own projects, writers will give readings and lectures to share their work and cultures, collaborate with artists from other genres and art forms, and travel and interact with audiences and literary communities across the United States. We would like to welcome the international writers to Iowa City and invite the public to join the International Writing Program this fall in celebrating 50 years of cultural diplomacy and creative exchange. Thank You: U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), Paul and Hualing Engle Fund, Max Kade Foundation, Creative New Zealand, Singapore National Arts Council, William B. Quarton Fellowship through the Cedar Rapids Community Foundation, Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation, Japan Foundation, Arts Council Korea, University of Iowa Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature, Drs. Ramon and Victoria Lim, International Programs at the University of Iowa, Iowa City/Coralville Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, Grinnell College, United States-Israeli Education Foundation, Taiwan Ministry of Culture, Etxepare Basque Institute, U.S. Embassy in Ljubljana, U.S. Embassy in Abuja, the University of Iowa, and an anonymous donation to the IWP.
IWP Fall Residency Collaboration: Would you like to invite an IWP Fall Residency writer to your classroom or arts organization? If so, please contact iwp@uiowa.edu for more information.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact the International Writing Program in advance at 319-335-0128. 2 INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM 2017
Weekly Residency Events
Special Events
IWP Panel Discussion Series
Prairie Lights Reading Series
Global Express
IWP Cinematheque Film Series
IWP and UI Dance Event
Fridays, noon–1 p.m. Iowa City Public Library Meeting Room A, 123 S. Linn St. (Sept 8, Gerber Lounge, 304 EPB, 251 W. Iowa Ave.)
Shambaugh House Reading Series
Fridays, 5–6 p.m. (Sept. 15, 5:30–6:30 p.m.) Shambaugh House, 100 SHSE, 430 N. Clinton St.
Sundays, 4-5 p.m. Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St.
Sundays, 7-9 p.m. E105 Adler Journalism Building, 140 W.Washington St.
Thursday, September 14, 8 p.m. Theatre B at the UI Theatre Building, 200 N. Riverside Dr. A night of theatre and writing
Thursday, October 19, 7 p.m. Space Place Theater at North Hall, 20 West Davenport St. Join the IWP and the UI Department of Dance as residents and student dancers present their work created in collaboration.
FALL RESIDENCY WRITER BIOS
Follow us on Facebook for the latest news and events and visit iwp.uiowa.edu/residency/events for a complete schedule
Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor:
ROSANNA WARREN is an awardwinning poet, translator, and scholar at the University of Chicago. Her literary criticism is published widely; and in her scholarship and teaching she breaks down barriers focusing on translation, literary biography, working at the intersection of literature and the visual arts, and between classical and modern literature. Her recent volumes of poetry are Ghost in a Red Hat (2011) and Departure (2003). She has served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and is the Hanna Holborn Gray Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
2017 Fall Residency Participants: GHADA AL-ABSY (fiction writer; Egypt), a physician, is the author of several novels and short story volumes, among them [Angelica] and [Al-Fishawi]. The collection [The Sons of Nymphs] won the 2014 Organization of Cultural Palaces competition; [“House of Almond”] won the 2016 Short Story Egyptian Club competition. Her novel [The Green Cobbler] was a runner-up for the 2016 Akhbar Al-Adab Prize. From 1999 to 2003 she was a soloist at the Cairo Opera House. She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
FATENA ALGHORRA (poet, journalist; Belgium) has four books of poetry: two were translated, one winning a prize for best Arabic translation into Italian. A fifth volume will appear in Arabic and in Dutch. Her work appears in the anthology Fifty Years of Palestinian Poets. In 2012 she won the El Hizjra prize for Dutch language writers of diverse background. After a career in broadcasting in Gaza, she is now a freelance journalist for Al Jazeera, a lecturer, a performer, and the organizer of poetry events in Belgium and the Netherlands. She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM 2017 3
IWP PANEL SERIES Fridays at the Iowa City Public Library
Sept. 1 In Translation In our ever-more-hybrid world, translation is ubiquitous: languages live side by side, commingle, influence each other, new words, accents, grammars, forms of data are surging everywhere. Do you too live on a linguistic fault line?
Sept. 22 Utopia and the Future Doesn’t dystopian literature feel all-too-real today? How can one “write forward,” toward a more utopian stance?
Oct. 20 Emo: The Mode of High Emotion How does your work tap intense emotion? Is there a movement toward heightened drama in your artistic domain? And, is “high emotion” the purview of particular groups of readers?
Sept. 8 Gerber Lounge, 304 EPB, 251 W. Iowa Ave.
Sept. 15 Should a Writer Speak for “The Universal”?
Writing in the Field of Optics How does current fiction and poetry translate, or simply talk to the screen, large or small? Does the ubiquity of image- and sound-based media put formal pressure on your writing?
Berlin’s literary festival is this year holding a worldwide reading in support of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Should writers be speaking on general issues of human rights-or should they be voicing local, specific, culturally-set priorities?
Sept. 29 Permanent Migration, or Rethinking Home
Oct. 6 Emancipating Bodies, Encountering Taboos
Is your home in more than one place? Where do your allegiances lie, what rift is the deepest? How might writing (re)phrase questions of identity and home, distinguish between the autobiographical and the writing self?
Does literature still contend with sexual, cultural, religious taboos? Are there subjects still too daunting to take on?
Oct. 27 Images of America Fall Residents share impressions of their time in the United States during this perennial IWP favorite.
AC: You know multiple ancient and modern languages. How do you analyze the world through the lenses of these different languages? RW: The reason that I study these languages is because I love the literature in them and wanted the literature in the original languages, because I didn’t feel that I was getting them essentially through translation. And these poems, the epics of Homer, plays of Sophocles, the Roman poets, they don’t seem ancient to me. They seem completely contemporary. They have power to teach me about what I want poetry to do now. That’s the essential point. For me they’re really not ancient. In a poem by Sappho, there are elemental ferocious passion and intelligence, and I want those qualities in poems now.
ILLUSION, FREEDOM, DISTURBANCE:
FALL RESIDENCY WRITER BIOS
ROSANNA WARREN
Ghada Al-Absy, Egypt
AC: You’ve taught students from vastly different environments, from the prison system to your current position as the Hanna Holborn Gray Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. How have these experiences fed into each other? RW: It’s humbling to be in so many different classrooms. I taught in medium-security prisons, where people were in for serious crimes, for twenty years and up to life. Those students in prison, these prisoners who wanted to learn, to get into my class
UBAH CRISTINA ALI FARAH (fiction writer, poet, playwright, translator; Italy) is a Somali-Italian novelist, performer, teacher and social activist. Her two novels, Madre piccola [Little Mother, Indiana UP 2011] and Il Comandante del fiume [The Commander of the River] tell stories of the Somali civil war and its refugees in Italy. In 2006, she was awarded the Lingua Madre National Literary Prize, and in 2008, the Vittorini Prize. She has a PhD in African Studies from the University of Naples; currently she lives in Brussels. She
had to have an equivalent of a high school degree. They had to want to be in this college level class and they were highly motivated, most of them, in different ways depending on the individual. They were people whose lives had bottomed out and for whom education represented something precious. There was extraordinary intensity in those classes; the students were impatient with anything that sounded like garbage and they wanted to learn something that would matter to them. So they pressed me hard as a teacher and I loved it. I felt that if it mattered to them, it should matter to me. So I tied some of that spirit back into my other classrooms, that intensity, that impatience, that determination. And it made me feel all over again how precious education is. It made me feel that the cliché phrase ‘liberal arts’ really does have a meaning. That, understood truly, education should be liberating, it should free our minds. AC: The Committee on Social Thought includes representatives from every field of the humanities, in order to address the “permanent questions at the origin of all learned inquiry.” What is literature’s role in this discussion? RW: This is a very elemental and important question. I ask myself that question all the time, what am I doing with all these philosophers? I can’t pretend to give one answer because the question is too enormous but
participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. RAMSHA ASHRAF (poet, dramatist, playwright; Pakistan) has a collection of poetry, Enmeshed (2015), publishes poems on her blog Escritura 415 and elsewhere, and contributes to literary magazines. At the Foundation University’s Rawalpindi campus she teaches writing courses, develops arts curricula and produces visual media. She participates courtesy
Panashe Chigumadzi, South Africa / Zimbabwe
INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM 2017 5
Art is a way of rendering us vulnerable to realities and complexities. I think that artists need to be corrected and instructed by scholars and rationalists but also scholars and rationalists need to be disturbed by the arts.
of lines of French poetry which I did with excitement. I started writing poems in French when I was twelve, in imitation of the poems which I was reciting which were all metrical rhymed poets of the nineteenth century. So I was working hard towards a technique at the age of twelve and did for many years after that. I didn’t think that I was going to be a poet, I just wanted to make these songs in language, in that case in the French language. And ever since, I’ve written poems to save my life. I simply write the poems I need to write in order to survive. And then they add up to books. And the more books I write, the more I establish an identity in the public world as someone who writes poetry. And that’s a consequence of writing books.
philosophy and sociology, each has its own conceptual map and is rationally based, as they should be, and often they derive their power from erecting intellectual systems. But art is unsystematic, so I think it’s crucial that art should be part of the program in order to challenge the complacency that comes with intellectual system-building. The danger is that you believe in your system more than you believe in reality. And there is also the danger of becoming too rigid and less responsive to reality. Art is a way
AC: What do you think is gained in translation? RW: From the translator’s perspective, there is enrichment for the translator. I learned ancient Greek and Latin because I loved those poems and I felt too separate from the originals by reading them in translation. The process of translating from the other language into your own language is a glorious act of cannibalism, in anthropological terms, eating the intimate brains of your enemy. I think that I’m eating the words of my intimate enemies because I want the
FALL RESIDENCY WRITER BIOS
one beginning answer is that I think in that program literature is subversive. That is, reading plays, poems, and novels and looking at movies disturbs the systematic rationalism of philosophy. It disturbs abstraction and system building and it’s meant to be disturbing in that way, it’s meant to enlarge that whole conceptual map. These other disciplines like
of rendering us vulnerable to realities and complexities. I think that artists need to be corrected and instructed by scholars and rationalists but also scholars and rationalists need to be disturbed by the arts. I love teaching in the Committee on Social Thought because I’m constantly being educated by my colleagues who are deeply
learned and can teach me about many things, and I also enrich the program by bringing in the dreamwork of poetry. AC: Are you the kind of poet today that you thought you’d be? RW: I didn’t think I’d be a poet; I really didn’t. I’ve been writing poems very consciously since I was twelve years old. I date it at twelve because I was living in France then, doing all my schoolwork in French and part of that schoolwork is memorizing hundreds
of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
Algiers. Her participation is made possible by an anonymous gift to the IWP.
HAJAR BALI (playwright, fiction writer, poet; Algeria) was, until 2016, a professor of mathematics at the University of Sciences and Technology in Algiers. Her collection of stage plays, Rêve et vol d’oiseaux [Dream and Birdflight] appeared in 2010; a collection of stories, Trop tard, in 2014. She has held writing residencies in France and Switzerland, and is now the general secretary of the L’Imago Cultural Association in
PANASHE CHIGUMADZI (novelist, essayist; South Africa/ Zimbabwe) is the author of the novel Sweet Medicine, which won the 2016 K. Sello Duiker Literary Award; a short story, “Small Deaths,” was nominated for the 2016 Pushcart Literary Prize. She is the founding editor of Vanguard Magazine, a platform for black women in post-apartheid South Africa. In 2016, she curated Soweto’s Abantu Book Festival for black readers and writers in the country’s largest township.
Lava Omer Darwesh, Iraq 6 INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM 2017
She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. AUDREY CHIN (fiction writer, non-fiction writer; Singapore) has a PhD in Public Policy and worked in investment banking. Her story collection Nine Cuts was shortlisted for the 2016 Singapore Literature Prize; that same year her novel As the Heart Bones Break was a finalist for the Singapore Book Awards. She is the organizer for the Singapore Ladies Asian Literary Book Group, promoting Asian literature in the community.
primitive power in those texts. It’s an act of gaining power. For those who read translation, if the translations are really good, they give an illusion of that original power and transfer something of that magic to the reader. That’s what we hope happens. AC: Has your present project translating the French poet Max Jacob presented any unexpected challenges? What are the differences between translating his poems and the ancient literature you’ve worked on in the past? RW: I’m not only translating Max Jacob, I’m also writing his biography. Translating his poems has brought me through his life at every stage; I just finished the first draft of his biography and I’m very full of his life and his death. The particular problems of translating Jacob are that he has a lot of crazy word play. He was one of the pioneer modern poets of France and his writing is abundant with puns and jokes and crazy rhymes that are all part of the poetic tissue of the operation of the meaning. And it’s fiendish to find equivalent puns, not to mention equivalent metrics. So it’s been a real work-out, but you just try to enter the pattern system of the original and try to find an equivalent system in English. But puns are the hardest, finding an acoustic
She participates courtesy of the Singapore National Arts Council. KRISTIAN SENDON CORDERO (poet, fiction writer, essayist, translator, filmmaker; Philippines) writes in Filipino, Bikol and Rinconada, and has translated Borges, Kafka, Wilde and Rilke to these languages. Two of his most recent poetry collections received the 2014 National Book Awards; his debut collection of poetry in his three respective languages won the Madrigal-Gonzales Best First Book Award in 2006. He is the deputy director of the Ateneo de Naga University Press.
Ida Beam Events
and semantic equivalent of the pun. You’re working with semantic meanings while also working with phonetics while trying to line them up in a really complicated way and it’s hard. And you can never get a one-to-one correspondence. The art of translation is the art of illusion, making people think that it did happen like magic. Jacob was one of the inventors of modern poetics and that meant that his poetic art is an art of breaking up conventional verse forms in really sophisticated ways. He helped to invent modernism, whereas a chorus by Sophocles or a lyric poem by Sappho is in intricately patterned conventional verse forms. To translate those texts, you have to invent some kind of verse form in English that behaves somewhat like the Greek. But with modernist disruptive poetry, you need to find a way to indicate a verse convention and violate it at the same time. How do you do that? You have to set up a cadence in English and then jostle it. You have to make the English reader think, “Oh, that sounds like Wordsworth” and then you have to make the bottom drop out. It’s like a wild game of Scrabble.
Lecture: “Max Jacob: a French Poet Between the Arts” Tuesday, Sept. 26 Time and location TBD
Reading:
Wednesday, Sept. 27, 7 p.m. Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St.
Q&A:
IWP Fall Residency ICRU Fellow Ashely Chong interviewed Rosanna Warren on July 6, 2017.
His participation is courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. LAVA OMER DARWESH (poet, translator; Iraq) graduated from the American University of Iraq with degrees in Business and English Literature. In her native city of Sulaimani she started a Freedom Writers Club and a Book Lovers Club; her poems have appeared in the anthology Lanterns of Hope, and she translates poetry and prose from English into Kurdish. She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and
Thursday, Sept. 28, 10:30 a.m. Frank Conroy Reading Room, Dey House, 507 N. Clinton St.
Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. MAUNG DAY (poet, artist, translator; Myanmar) has published six poetry books in Burmese and one in English. His poetry has appeared in International Poetry Review, Guernica, The Wolf,The Awl and elsewhere. He translates widely between English and Burmese; his visual work and poetry are exhibited and curated internationally. He participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
DILMAN DILA (fiction writer, filmmaker; Uganda) is the author of three volumes, The Flying Man of Stone, A Killing in the Sun, and Cranes Crest at Sunset, shortlisted for the 2016 Gerald Kraak Award and the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His The Felistas Fable was the Film of the Year at the 2014 Uganda Film Festival; What Happened in Room 13 has had six million views on YouTube; he regularly produces science fiction films for his YouTube channel. He participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM 2017 7
1960
50 YEARS OF IWP: Events, People, Milestones Before 1967, regular international presence in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 1964 its director Paul Engle invites poet Edmund Keeley to teach “a translation workshop.”
1967 IWP is founded by Paul and Hualing Nieh, with funding from UI, private,
and federal sources. Among the first twelve participants of the academic-year-long residency are writers from Cambodia, West Germany, Poland, Ethiopia, Iran, Japan and Taiwan.
1970
1976 The Engles are nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. 1977 Paul Engle retires after a decade of directing IWP; Hualing Nieh Engle
assumes the position. Peter Nazareth is appointed as Senior Advisor to the program; his wife, Mary Nazareth, becomes the program’s housing coordinator— positions they still hold.
1979 “Chinese weekend” on UI campus—a first meeting anywhere of mainland
1970
Chinese and Taiwanese writers after the Cultural Revolution. During the program’s 50 years, 55 writers from China/PRC, 44 from Taiwan, and 24 from Hong Kong will have participated.
1985 Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, in
1980
residence, along with 35 others.
1986 With Hualing Nieh Engle on leave, UI Prof. Daniel Weissbort and Prof.
1973
Frederic Will are temporary Director and Co-Director.
1987 IWP celebrates its 20th anniversary by bringing alumni and guests, including poets and Nobel Prize winners Czesław Milosz (1980) and Seamus Heaney (1995), to campus.
1988 Hualing Nieh Engle retires. The directorship is assumed by UI Prof. Fredrick
1990
Woodard, after whom the writer Clark Blaise will direct the program from 1990-97. Chinese writer Bei Dao in residence.
1993 The 100 Words literary journal starts amid the year’s receding floodwaters, with writers relocated to Walden retirement home.
1998 UI Prof. Steven Ungar serves as the program’s interim director. 1999 UI Prof. Sandra Barkan serves as the program’s interim director. Under
2000
threat of being dismantled by the UI College of Liberal Arts, IWP must curtail its programming; a “Save IWP” campaign, with petition website, is launched. IWP is revived under the auspices of the Office of the Vice-President of Research, led by UI Prof. David Skorton, and a national search for a new director is launched.
1976
2000 Poet, essayist, and translator Christopher Merrill is appointed to direct the program. The fall residency reopens, with 18 participants.
2001 IWP’s first international conference, “Lost and Found in Translation,” takes place, somewhat delayed by the events of 9/11. A board of advisors is appointed. Israeli novelist Etgar Keret in residence.
1982
2002 IWP’s online journal 91st Meridian begins publication. The program
moves from EPB to the Shambaugh House, after the 1902 building is relocated to the corner of Clinton & Fairchild Streets. The first writer from Laos in residence.
2004 Mo Yan, 2012 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, in residence. 2006 Writers meet at the island of Paros for “The New Symposium,” an
2000
international conference sponsored by the US Dept. of State and Fulbright Greece. The themes for the three-year project are “What We Have in Common,” “Justice: One or Many?” and “Home/Lands.”
2007 IWP turns 40. The first Overseas Reading Tour, in partnership with the US Dept. of State, takes American writers to read and teach in Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, and Turkey. The subsequent decade’s tours will go to Cyprus, Kenya, Nepal, Afghanistan, UAE, Pakistan, Brazil, Iraq, Cuba,Venezuela, and many other countries.
2008 IWP opens “Between the Lines,” a summer program bringing together international and American writers aged 16-19 for creative writing workshops and global literature seminars: because of that year’s flooding, the UIL-Chicago campus hosts the group at short notice. IWP leads the application process for UNESCO for Iowa City’s City of Literature status, granted that year.
1999
2009 Nieh Hualing Engle is drafted into Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame, the first
Asian to receive that honor. An international symposium on “Writing Cities” in Morocco. The conference “The Life of Discovery,” co-sponsored with the Chinese Writers’ Association, brings US writers together with Chinese minority ethnic communities. A first virtual creative writing course is taught to a group of US and Saudi women participants.
2001
2010 IWP’s publishing imprint, 91st Meridian Books, gets underway. First participants from Djibouti and Mauritius.
2012 The first installment of a simultaneous live stage experiment, “Book
2014 “Silk Routes: Heritage, Trade, Practice,” a project with writers from
2010
Wings,” takes place between Iowa City and Moscow; later performances are costaged with Baghdad, Shanghai, and Cape Town. The WhitmanWeb site launches, with 52 weekly releases of an annotated stanza from “Song of Myself” translated into 13 languages, including the first-ever Persian and the first complete Russian versions. IWP’s Distance Learning Program begins offering online education to participants around the world: roughly 65,000 have so far participated in its MOOCs, courses, and exchanges. Shambaugh House, home to IWP since 2002
South and Central Asia, begins a three-year run.
2015 “Lanterns of Hope: A Poetry Project for Iraqi Youth” is launched,
featuring poetic collaboration between Arabic- , Kurdish- and English-writing students.
2017 IWP celebrates its 50th anniversary.
2009
50th Anniversary Week October 9–13 Over the course of a week, in coordination with the Iowa City Book Festival, the International Writing Program will mark its rich history with a series of special events. The centerpiece of the anniversary, a quartet of panel discussions, will feature alumni of the residency from all of the last five decades. Satellite readings and film screenings will take place on campus and in downtown Iowa City. For the latest schedule visit: iwp50.grad.uiowa.edu/the-2017-anniversary All panels take place at Iowa City Public Library Meeting Room A, 123 S. Linn St., and are free to the public.
50th Panel: World Literature Today Tuesday, Oct. 10, noon–1:30 p.m.
Tim Parks (Chair), Lorna Goodison, Peter Nazareth,Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Jeremy Tiang Major international writers take on some contested issues around the idea of a world literature: Is globalization changing what and how we read? Does World Lit spread on the back of “universal human values” – or is it propelled by marketing and the internet? What of the crushingly dominant role of English? What power does translation have? And, what literary writing is falling between the cracks, but shouldn’t?
50th Panel: Fifty Years of Latin American Literature Wednesday, Oct. 11, noon–1:30 p.m. (Chair) TBA, Luis Bravo, Alberto Fuguet, Pola Oloixarac
Spanish-language writers from the Americas track the aesthetic, formal, thematic, and regional changes in the five decades since El Boom. Are the inheritances valued, or a burden?
50th Panel: One Chinese Language, Many Chinese Literatures Thursday, Oct. 12, noon–1:30 p.m. Jin Feng (Chair), Bi Feiyu, Dung Kai-cheung, Li Di An, Poon Yiu Ming,Ya Hsien Thanks to the Engle legacy at the IWP, Iowa City has been the temporary home for some of today’s most beloved Chinese-language writers. A multi-generational group of novelists, poets and critics from both sides of the Taiwan Strait debates the forces at work in contemporary Sinophone writing.
50th Panel: National Literatures in a Time of Rising Nationalisms Friday, Oct. 13, noon–1:30 p.m. Daniel Simon (Chair), Dung Kai-cheung, Luljeta Lleshanaku, Sadek Mohammed, Anja Utler
During this era of the inward turn, with nation-states enthusiastically claiming a monolithic cultural and historical identity, the challenge falls on writers and readers alike to re-think what – and who – literature is for. Should minority voices be challenging majority narratives? Is language flattened out when a nation yearns to speak in one voice? Is the old role of the writer as “a nation’s conscience” needed again? Or, might the sum of a nation’s social media posts be a new, more real “national literature”?
10 INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM 2017
You are Invited INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM 50th ANNIVERSARY GALA and FUNDRAISER Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2017 7-9 p.m., Iowa Memorial Union 2nd Floor Ballroom Join us for an evening of literature, dance, music and cuisine from around the world With readings and addresses by Lorna Goodison (Jamaica, IWP ‘83) Luljeta Lleshanaku (Albania, IWP ‘99) Bi Feiyu (China, IWP ‘06) and other eminent alumni A multi-lingual poetry/ sound & dance performance based on Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” by: The UI Laptop Orchestra, composed & conducted by Jean-François Charles Choreographed by George de la Peña Plus a silent auction and dishes from five continents
Ticket price: $125 Visit
iwp50.grad.uiowa.edu/the-2017-anniversary
Guest Writers Partial bibliographies. All literary works named are published in English. For more details about the Anniversary guests, visit iwp50.grad.uiowa.edu/the-2017-anniversary
China) IWP resident in 2006 Massage (2015, Mao Dun Prize), Three Sisters (2010, Man Asian Literary Prize), The Moon Opera (2007) Luis Bravo (poet, essayist;
Uruguay) IWP resident in 2012 Liquen/Lichen (2014) Dung Kai-cheung 董啟章
Lorna Goodison (poet;
Jamaica/USA) IWP resident in 1983 Oracabessa (2014, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature), From Harvey Light (2008), Golden Grove: New & Selected Poems (2006), I Am Becoming My Mother (1986, Commonwealth Prize for the Americas)
(fiction writer; Hong Kong) IWP resident in 2009 Cantonese Love Stories:TwentyFive Vignettes of a City (2017), Atlas:The Archaeology of an Imaginary City (2012)
Li Di An 李笛安 (fiction
Jin Feng (scholar; China/USA)
Luljeta Lleshanaku (poet;
50th Anniversary Guest, Professor of Chinese at Grinnell College. The New Woman in Early TwentiethCentury Chinese Fiction (2004) Alberto Fuguet (fiction
writer, critic, director; Chile) IWP resident in 1994 Shorts (2005), The Movies of My Life (2003)
Esther Dischereit, Germany
writer; China) IWP guest writer in 2017 [Nanyin: Memory of the City of Dragon – Part Three] (2012, in Chinese)
Albania) IWP resident in 1999 Negative Space (2018), Child of Nature (2010, Finalist for Best Translated Book Award), Fresco: Selected Poetry (2002) Sadek Mohammed (poet,
translator; Iraq) IWP resident in 2014 Editor: Flowers of the Flame: Unheard Voices of Iraq (2008)
ESTHER DISCHEREIT (poet, novelist, essayist, stage and radio dramatist; Germany) has given lectures and readings around the world. Most recently she published Blumen für Otello. Über die Verbrechen von Jena [Flowers for Othello. On the Crimes of Jena] and edited Havel, Hunde, Katzen,Tulpen, Garz erzählt [Havel, Dogs, Cats, Tulips – Garz Talking]. Her work spans multiple genres and often reflects the post-Holocaust landscape in
Peter Nazareth (fiction
writer, scholar; Uganda/USA) IWP resident in 1973, Professor at UI. The General Is Up (1984), Editor: Pivoting on the Point of Return: Modern Goan Literature (2000)
Poon Yiu Ming 潘耀明
(essayist, publisher; Hong Kong) IWP resident in 1983, Chief Editor of Ming Pao Monthly Daniel Simon (publisher,
Argentina) IWP resident in 2010 Savage Theories (2017)
poet, translator; USA) 50th Anniversary Guest Editor-in-Chief of World Literature Today. After Reading Everything (2016)
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Jeremy Tiang (fiction
Pola Oloixarac (novelist;
(fiction writer; Kenya) IWP resident in 2005 Dust (2015, Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature), “Woman of the Year” (2004, Caine Prize for African Writing) Tim Parks (novelist, non-
fiction writer, translator, critic; UK/Italy) 50th Anniversary Guest In Extremis (2017), Italian Ways (2013), Europa (1997, Shortlisted for the Booker Prize), Translating Style (1997)
Germany, e.g. Joëmis Tisch [Joëmis Table] and Übungen jüdisch zu sein [Exercises in Being Jewish]. In 2009 Dischereit received the Erich Fried Prize. In 2017 she was a visiting professor at the University of Virginia; she teaches at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna. Her participation is made possible by the Max Kade Foundation.
writer, playwright, translator; Singapore) IWP resident in 2011 State of Emergency (2017) Anja Utler (poet, translator;
Germany) IWP resident in 2014 engulf – enkindle (2010)
Ya Hsien 瘂弦, pen name of Wang Ching-lin 王慶麟 (poet;
Taiwan) IWP resident in 1967 Abyss (2016, Finalist for the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation)
FUJINO KAORI 藤野可 織 (fiction writer; Japan) writes short stories and novellas about the horror that lurks behind everyday life. In 2006 she won the Bungakukai Prize for New Writers for her story “Iyashii tori” [The Greedy Bird]. She was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize in 2009 before winning it in 2013 for her acclaimed novella Tsume to me [Nails and Eyes]. Her book O hanashi shite ko-chan [Little Miss Tell-Me-a-Story] was
INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM 2017 11
FALL RESIDENCY WRITER BIOS
Bi Feiyu 毕 毕飞宇 (novelist;
50th Anniversary Projects
FALL RESIDENCY WRITER BIOS
50th Anniversary Website iwp50.grad.uiowa.edu Designed to celebrate and illustrate five decades of the program’s work, participants, and accomplishments, the IWP@50 site features, in addition to special programming during the anniversary year, a window into our archive, maps visualizing the program’s global reach, a timeline of milestones, as well as critical texts assessing the program’s impact on national and regional literatures.
published by Kodansha the same year. Her most recent collection of stories is Final Girl (2016). Fujino’s participation is made possible by the Japan Foundation.
Gimba Kakanda, Nigeria
ENZA GARCÍA ARREAZA (fiction writer, poet;Venezuela) is an essayist for the cultural platform Backroom Caracas and for the magazine Climax. In 2016, she was selected by the Guadalajara International Book Fair for “Ochenteros,” a program for Latin American writers born in the 1980s. Her short story collection El bosque de los abedules [The Forest of
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Origins Podcast iwp.uiowa.edu/podcast Origins:The International Writing Program Podcast is an interview series with writers from around the world addressing the origins of their creative works, the literary and social cultures in which they write, and the art of language.
Birches] won the 2010 National University Literature Prize of Simon Bolívar University; the story volume Cállate poco a poco [Be Quiet Slowly] won the 2007 Contest for Unpublished Authors. She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. SANTIAGO GIRALT (playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, fiction writer; Argentina) writes plays, screenplays, and novels, and directs films. In 2017, he was awarded the National Arts Fund
Bi-Centennial Grant in Literature. His first novel, [Nelly R, the General’s Lover], was shortlisted for the 2008 Planeta International Prize; La mala memoria came out in 2015; Disparo is forthcoming. He has written and directed over a dozen films, and participated in many international film festivals. He participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. GIMBA KAKANDA (fiction writer, poet, journalist; Nigeria) published a first volume of poetry, Safari Pants, in 2010; other
50th Anniverary Broadsides iwp50.grad.uiowa.edu/ the-2017-anniversary/ broadsides Created in collaboration with the UI School of Art and Art History, a set of 10 letterpress broadsides mark the IWP’s 50th anniversary–each representing, in poetry or prose, one of the program’s five decades.
work has been anthologized. He is an editor at the Daily Nigerian, a daily committed to promoting transparency in governance, and maintains a weekly column in several other periodicals, chiefly concerned with social issues. He participates courtesy of the U.S. Embassy in Abuja. ANNE KENNEDY (fiction writer, screenwriter, poet; New Zealand) received the 2013 New Zealand Post Book Award for Poetry for The Darling North; in 2014 her novel The Last Days of the National Costume was a finalist for the New Zealand Post
50th Anniversary Instagram project instagram.com/uiiwp Follow us on Instagram for a look at program artifacts and writer spotlights from each year, starting in 1967 and leading up to IWP’s 50th annual residency this fall.
Book Award and was longlisted for the IMPAC-Dublin Award. In 2016 she was in residence at the Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters. During her career, she has been an advocate for Maori and Pasifika voices. Her participation is made possible by Creative New Zealand. KIM DOYOON (fiction writer, librettist, translator, critic; South Korea) is the author of three books and many stories, as well as of opera libretti, and scripts for plays. She is also a translator and dramaturg. Among her themes
Mobile Museum A traveling exhibition shares with Iowans the story of IWP@50.
are white-collar crime, ancient legends and history, and hybrid cultures. Kim’s libretto “Vandal Sara” was awarded the ARKO Create Award and was recently showcased. She participates courtesy of Arts Council Korea. LAU STUART 劉偉成 (poet, essayist, critic; Hong Kong) forms his English name by combining the Chinese characters for “study” and “arts.” He has published five poetry collections; the most recent, 陽光棧道有多 寬 [How Broad Are the Plank Roads of Sunshine] (2015), won the 13th Hong Kong Biennial
Okky Madasari, Indonesia
INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM 2017 13
FALL RESIDENCY WRITER BIOS
Lau Stuart, Hong Kong
Sharlene Teo, Singapore
Vladmir Martinovski, Macedonia
Award for Chinese Literature. A publishing manager at Oxford University Press (China), Lau is completing a PhD at Hong Kong Baptist University. He participates courtesy of the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation.
Indian languages, including English; she also writes for children. She works at the Ananda Publishers in Kolkata. Her participation is courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
title of a 2003 volume. Owuor was an IWP Fall Resident in 2005, and returns as the Residency’s first Grinnell Fellow. She participates courtesy of Grinnell College.
OKKY MADASARI (novelist, Indonesia) is the founder and director of the ASEAN Literary Festival. In 2012, her novel The Outcast, about an Islamic sect facing persecution by mainstream religion, received the Khatulistiwa Literary Award. The Years of the Voiceless (2010) is about struggle for justice and freedom while questioning the authority of religion; 86 (2011) addresses corruption in Indonesia; Bound (2015) tells about a life of a transgender in a religiously conservative society. She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
VLADIMIR MARTINOVSKI Владимир Мартиновски (fiction writer, poet, critic, translator; Macedonia) teaches Comparative Poetics at Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje and is the secretary of the Macedonian PEN Center. The author of ten poetry collections and of many volumes of literary criticism and theory, he has been awarded for poetry (at the International Struga Poetry Evenings, in 2010) and for literary criticism in 2014. He participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
TILOTTAMA MAJUMDER তিলোত্তমা মজুমদার (fiction writer, poet; India) won the Ananda Puroshkar, given for excellence in Bengali literature, for her novel Basudhara (2003); more than ten titles have followed. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into several
YVONNE ADHIAMBO OWUOR (fiction writer; Kenya) is an author, lecturer, and arts curator. Her first novel, Dust, was published by Knopf in 2014, and received the 2015 TBC Jomo Kenyatta Literature Award. In 2003, she won the Caine Prize for African Writing for her story “Weight of Whispers,” also the
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MATJAŽ PIKALO (poet, screenwriter, musician, multimedia artist; Slovenia) has five books of poetry and many works for children. Luža [Puddle] won the 2002 Ve˘cernica Award for Best Book for Young Readers, and was honored by the IBBY Congress in Cape Town; in 2004 the children’s book Think Good and Wise won him Italy’s Arte Senza Confine award. The Second Ivan’s Death, a documentary about Slovenia’s key writer Ivan Cankar, based on his screenplay, is in production. He plays with the band Autodafé, and on an artist soccer team. His participation is made possible by the U.S. Embassy in Ljubljana and the University of Iowa. YURIY SEREBRYANSKIY Юрий Серебрянский (fiction writer, journalist; Kazakhstan) is the editor-inchief of Esquire Kazakhstan, the editor of the Polish diaspora magazine Ałmatyński Kurier Polonijny, and the author of five volumes of prose and poetry.
Antoinette Tidjani Alou, Niger His novel [Destination. Road Pastoral] won the Russkaya Premia for best short prose in 2010; the novel [Prazhaki] won the same award in 2014. His [Kazakhstani Fairy Tales] won an award at the 2017 Silk Roads Book Fair. He participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. YAARA SHEHORI (fiction writer, poet, editor; Israel) is a literary editor at Keter Publishing House. She has published many works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction—most recently the novel [Aquarium] (2016). In 2015, she received both the Levi Eshkol Prime Minister’s Prize and the Minister of Culture Award for Hebrew Literature in the ‘young authors’ category. She participates courtesy of the United States-Israeli Education Foundation. SUBRAJ SINGH (playwright, fiction writer, journalist, critic; Guyana) teaches at the University of Guyana and the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama and has a weekly arts column in the Guyana Chronicle. His Rebelle and Other Stories won the 2015 Guyana Prize for Literature as the
Matjaž Pikalo, Slovenia
Julienne van Loon, Australia
Best First Book of Fiction; his play “Masque” won the 2016 National Drama Festival Awards for Best New Guyanese Play and Best Production. He participates thanks to the William B. Quarton Fund through the Cedar Rapids Community Foundation.
TK Wong Fellowship. She participates courtesy of the Singapore National Arts Council.
of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
ANTOINETTE TIDJANI ALOU (fiction writer, poet, translator, scholar; Niger) teaches literature and directs the Program of Performing Arts at Abdou Moumouni University in Niamey. She has been the president of the International Society for Oral Literatures of Africa, and a collaborator on the “Women Writing Africa” project. Her first work, On m’appelle Nina, retraces the exilic experiences of a woman who leaves Jamaica for France, then Niger. A short story collection, a volume of poetry and a memoir are forthcoming. She participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
KIRMEN URIBE (novelist, poet, essayist; Spain) is the first Basque writer to participate in the IWP. Bilbao-New YorkBilbao, his first novel, earned him Spain’s 2008 National Fiction Prize, and has been translated into fifteen languages; his poems have appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere. Elkarrekin esnatzeko ordua [The Hour of Waking Together] was published in 2017. He participates courtesy of the Etxepare Basque Institute.
WIPAS SRITHONG วิภาส ศรีทอง (fiction writer; Thailand) has published three novels, many short stories, and collections of English-language and concrete poetry. His debut novel Kon Krae [The Dwarf] won the 2012 S.E.A. Write Award for Novels; his subsequent two novels were long- and shortlisted for it, respectively. His stories have won the Kukrij Pramote and P.E.N. (Thailand) awards. He participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. SHARLENE TEO (fiction writer; Singapore) won the Deborah Rogers Writer’s Award for her debut novel Ponti, to be released in 2018 and translated into six languages. She is a PhD student in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia, where she received the Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship and the David
KINGA TÓTH (poet, translator, illustrator, songwriter, performer; Hungary) has published six poetry books, all self-illustrated. Her visual poetry has been exhibited widely; she is the lead singer of the experimental band Tóth Kína Hegyfalu and is presently working on the visual/sound/poetry project Moonlight Faces and X. Ms. Tóth participates courtesy
Yuriy Serebryanskiy, Kazakhstan
JULIENNE VAN LOON (novelist, essayist; Australia) is a research fellow at non/fictionLab of RMIT University in Melbourne. She won the Australian/Vogel’s Award and in 2005 was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize First Book Award for Road Story. Her work, including the recent novel Harmless, has strong creative and cultural connection to Asia, particularly China. Her forthcoming collection The Thinking Woman includes interviews with leading women from across the globe. Her participation is made possible by the Paul and Hualing Engle Fund.
Xavier Villanova, Mexico XAVIER VILLANOVA (playwright, screenwriter, actor, translator; Mexico) has had his work staged in Mexico, the US, and Venezuela; in 2011, the Lark Play Development Center in New York workshopped his Acheron: The River of Tragedy. Ocean Blues, co-written by him and based on his eponymous play, is on Netflix. In 2010 he won the National Playwright Award given by the UANL, and received a grant from the Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas. He teaches theatre history at Universidad de la Comunicación in Mexico City. He participates courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. YAN CHUNG-HSIEN (fiction writer, poet, essayist, art critic; Taiwan) is a writer, artist, curator, designer, and director, dedicated to a cross-disciplinary approach that integrates the verbal with the visual, and the traditional with the avant-garde. His 24 publications have won him a Taiwan Gold Book novel award, a Taipei Literature Award, and an Asia Weekly Book Award. He is a professor of architecture at Shih Chen University in Taipei. His participation is made possible by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING PROGRAM 2017 15
Marie Silkeberg, excerpt from the volume Atlantis, Albert Bonniers Förlag, 2017 // tr. from the Swedish by Kelsi Vanada, with Nataša Ďurovičová, 2017 from “Midwest”
Ni går länge genom skogen. Effigy Mounds. Djurformerna för de döda. Kommer till Hanging Rock. Du ser Mississippi breda ut sig. Gränsen mot Wisconsin.
You walk for a long time through the forest. Effigy Mounds. Animal shapes for the dead. Arriving at Hanging Rock. You see the Mississippi fan out. The border to Wisconsin.
Jag tappade hela matsäcken i en grop säger hon. De döda var hungriga.
I dropped the whole packed lunch in a hole she says. The dead were hungry.
Ni kör tillbaka genom en blödande solnedgång. Länge i mörkret.
You drive back through a bleeding sunset. Long time in the dark.
Han tar sig mot hjärtat. It’s a hard work you know.
He reaches for his heart. It’s a hard work you know.
You became so silent skriver han.
You became so silent he writes.
The eyes of others.
The eyes of others.
Det mörknar över floden.
It darkens above the river.
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