Festival Overview
Welcome
Dear Writer,
Here in Iowa City we are preparing for the 23rd Iowa Summer Writing Festival. The waters have receded, and we’re gathering shells after the historic flooding of our area last summer. It was a wet one. Still, we couldn’t find ourselves in better company. Messages in bottles from friends continue to bob in—as stories, essays, poems—from those who couldn’t join us and those who waded in. Each of these is an oasis.
The Festival is proud to announce that Iowa City was recently named an UNESCO City of Literature—the first American City of Literature in the Creative Cities Network. Iowa City has long been a haven for writers and The University of Iowa our ancestral home. For eighty years, Iowa has taught the world to write. The gifts of this rich literary soil continue today in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the International Writing Program, the Nonfiction Writing Program, the Playwrights Workshop, the Translation Program, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, The Iowa Review, the Iowa Center for the Book, The University of Iowa Press, and Prairie Lights Books’ Live from Prairie Lights. In recent years, Iowa City dedicated the Iowa Avenue Literary Walk, which celebrates, in bronze relief panels, some of the singular voices that have come together here, from Flannery O’Connor and Kurt Vonnegut to John Irving and James Tate. Everything here is closely observed—now, even the sidewalks.
The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is an opportunity for you to share your work in a community that wishes it well. It’s a long conversation we’ve been having in Iowa City. We invite you to pull up a chair.
Amy Margolis
Director
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Sponsored by the Division of Continuing Education
Iowa Summer Writing Festival
C215 Seashore Hall
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242
Phone 319-335-4160
FAX 319-335-4743
iswfestival@uiowa.edu
Last updated on February 19, 2009