Students and alumni of Iowa’s graduate writing programs share new work.

Featuring Katy Chrisler, Shabnam Nadiya, Margaret Ross, Montreux Rotholtz, Mason Scisco, Grant Souders, Zachary Tyler Vickers, and Elizabeth Weiss.

Katy Chrisler: poems

Elizabeth Weiss: from “1992″

Margaret Ross: [...]]]> Season 05
Episode 10
Air date: 5/9/12, at 2 PM CST

Students and alumni of Iowa’s graduate writing programs share new work.

Featuring Katy Chrisler, Shabnam Nadiya, Margaret Ross, Montreux Rotholtz, Mason Scisco, Grant Souders, Zachary Tyler Vickers, and Elizabeth Weiss.

Katy Chrisler: poems

Elizabeth Weiss: from “1992″

Margaret Ross: “Personal Life”

Zachary Vickers: from “Not All the Dominoes Having Yet Fallen”

Montreux Rotholtz: poems

Mason Scisco: poems

Shabnam Nadiya: from “Girl in the Rain”

Complete Episode:

Today’s program features four recent graduates of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Nick Dybek, Daniel Khalastchi, Madeline McDonnell, and Vinnie Wilhelm.

Nick Dybek, author of When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man (Riverhead Books), and Vinnie Wilhelm, author of Episode 09
Season 05
Air date: 4/18/12, at 2 PM CST

Today’s program features four recent graduates of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Nick Dybek, Daniel Khalastchi, Madeline McDonnell, and Vinnie Wilhelm.

Nick Dybek, author of When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man (Riverhead Books), and Vinnie Wilhelm, author of In the Absence of Predators, will read from their work at Prairie Lights Books on Wednesday, April 18th, at 7 PM.

This episode also features two other writers associated with Rescue Press, the publisher of Wilhelm’s debut: fiction writer Madeline McDonnell, author of There is Something Inside, It Wants to Get Out, and poet Danny Khalastchi, Rescue Press Assistant Editor, author of Manoleria.

We discussed first books, the challenges of post-MFA life, small presses and large ones, and what happens when writers marry.

GUEST BIOS

Vinnie Wilhelm was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is a graduate of
the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the recipient of literary fellowships
from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the National
Endowment for the Arts. Wilhelm’s fiction has appeared in the Virginia
Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere, and
his first collection of stories, In the Absence of Predators, was
released last fall from Rescue Press. He lives in Philadelphia.

Nick Dybek is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Iowa
Writers’ Workshop. He is the recipient of a Hopwood Award for Short
Fiction, a Maytag Fellowship, a 2010 Michener-Copernicus Society of
America Award, and a Granta New Voices selection. His first novel,
When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man, was just released from
Riverhead Books. He lives in New York City.

Madeline McDonnell is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a
former lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary. Her work has
appeared in Harvard Review and Cutbank, and her first collection of
stories, There is Something Inside, It Wants to Get Out was published
by Rescue Press in 2010. She lives in New York City, where she is at
work on a novel and a longer collection of short stories.

Daniel Khalastchi is a graduate of the University Wisconsin-Madison
and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the author of Manoleria (2011),
winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Prize, and his poems have
recently appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of journals
including Kenyon Review, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, and the Iowa
Review. He currently lives in Iowa City where he is the Assistant
Director of the University of Iowa’s Undergraduate Certificate in
Writing Program and a co-editor and founder of Rescue Press.

On this Lit Show, Nicholson Baker sits down with co-host Ben Mauk to discuss his new novel, House of Holes. Baker is the author of nine novels and four works of non-fiction, including Double Fold, which won a [...]]]> Season 05
Episode 08
Air date: Friday April 6th at 10 AM CST

On this Lit Show, Nicholson Baker sits down with co-host Ben Mauk to discuss his new novel, House of Holes. Baker is the author of nine novels and four works of non-fiction, including Double Fold, which won a National Book Critics Circle award.

Baker’s novels explore the experience of consciousness against the background of life’s flotsam and jetsam: buying shoelaces in The Mezzanine, feeding a six-month-old daughter in Room Temperature, and lighting a morning fire in A Box of Matches. These slim volumes pay loving attention to the domestic and quotidian, with whirligig sentences that have led the New York Times to describe Baker as “one of the most beautiful, original, and ingenious prose stylists to have come along in decades.”

But he may be better known for the bawdy fantasias of his sex “trilogy,” which includes the novels Vox, The Fermata, and most recently House of Holes: A Book of Raunch, which Slate described as “the extravagant, bravura performance of a writer as truly manically interested in craft as he is obsessed with sex.”

Baker’s eye for unconventional subjects and his idiosyncratic, ever-growing set of interests (he’s written about poetry and rhyme in his novel The Anthologist, the endangered paper culture in Double Fold, and pacifism during World War II in Human Smoke) make him perhaps the most unpredictable writer at work today.

Baker lives with his family in Maine. He is the Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor in the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and will give a free reading on Thursday, April 5th at 8:00 p.m. in the W151 auditorium of the Pappajohn Business Building.

Featuring Henry Finch, Jake Fournier, Jessica Laser, Adam Soto, and Alex Walton.

Henry Finch: “Waking in Debt (after Kenneth Koch)”

Adam Soto‘s “Solutions” is a story in three parts: “Advice,” “Plans,” and “The Summer We Ended [...]]]> Season 05
Episode 06
Air date: Wednesday, March 7th at 2 PM CST

Featuring Henry Finch, Jake Fournier, Jessica Laser, Adam Soto, and Alex Walton.

Henry Finch: “Waking in Debt (after Kenneth Koch)”

Adam Soto‘s “Solutions” is a story in three parts: “Advice,” “Plans,” and “The Summer We Ended Global Warming”

Jake Fouriner: “Nonetheless Unless No,” “The Lotus Eaters,” and Charles Baudelaire’s “A Carcass”

Alex Walton: “Iron”

Jessica Laser: “Monger,” “Two,” “Television,” “Wife,” “Manger,” and “Ten”

Full Episode:

On this Lit Show, Heidi Julavits discusses her new novel, The Vanishers. Julavits is author of three previous books, The Uses of Enchantment (2006), The Effect of Living Backwards (2003), and The Mineral Palace (2000). We talked about [...]]]> Season 05
Episode 06
Air date: Monday March 26th at 3 PM CST.

On this Lit Show, Heidi Julavits discusses her new novel, The Vanishers. Julavits is author of three previous books, The Uses of Enchantment (2006), The Effect of Living Backwards (2003), and The Mineral Palace (2000). We talked about psychic self-defense, toxic relationships, and how to achieve taut energy in narrative–as well as her experiences as a founding co-editor of the The Believer.

Julavits’s short stories have appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, the Best American Short Stories, Zoetrope, among other places. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, Elle, and the Best American Travel Essays. In addition to her work for The Believer, she’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, Ben Marcus, and their two children.

Iowa City is one of five world cities recognized by the United Nations for distinguished literary history and ongoing cultural contributions, the only such city in the United States. Most Iowa Citians are aware of our community’s UNESCO designation—but [...]]]> Episode 05
Season 05
Air date: Wednesday, February 15 at 2 PM CST

Iowa City is one of five world cities recognized by the United Nations for distinguished literary history and ongoing cultural contributions, the only such city in the United States. Most Iowa Citians are aware of our community’s UNESCO designation—but what exactly does it mean to be an official “City of Literature?”

On this Lit Show, Jeanette Pilak, Executive Director of City of Literature USA, and BJ Love will discuss Iowa city’s UNESCO status—and help explain the responsibilities, privileges, opportunities, and challenges that come with it.

We’ll talk about how Iowa City achieved its official designation, City of Literature USA’s mission and objectives, our role within the greater network of UNESCO “Creative Cities,” and the way UNESCO’s—perhaps threatened—backing will continue to foster Iowa City’s literary culture in years to come.

This Lit Show features recent Writers’ Workshop graduate Chinelo Okparanta, whose short story “America” is a centerpiece of Granta‘s new “Exit Strategies” issue. Granta‘s Deputy Editor Ellah Allfrey joins her in the studio by phone.

Okparanta discussed her childhood [...]]]> Season 05
Episode 03
Air date: February 8th at 2 PM CST

This Lit Show features recent Writers’ Workshop graduate Chinelo Okparanta, whose short story “America” is a centerpiece of Granta‘s new “Exit Strategies” issue. Granta‘s Deputy Editor Ellah Allfrey joins her in the studio by phone.

Okparanta discussed her childhood memories of Port Harcourt, Nigeria and her first impressions of the United States; the environmental crises faced by residents of the Niger Delta region; and the reasons why Nigeria continues to be the backdrop for her fiction—even after many years in the United States. After reading an excerpt from a new short story, “Fairness,” Okparanta and Ellah Allfrey addressed their writer-editor relationship, the role of folk tales within Okparanta’s short stories, and the subversive quietness of her prose.

Chinelo Okparanta was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. She received her BS from Pennsylvania State University, her MA from Rutgers University and her MFA from Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. Her short stories are forthcoming in GRANTA, Conjunctions, and Subtropics. Her collection of stories, Tumors and Butterflies, and her first novel, Under the Udara Trees, are also forthcoming. She has worked as a Sears sales associate, an English and French teacher at the middle and high school levels, an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa, a reader for NPR’s Three Minute Fiction Contest, and an editorial assistant for The Iowa Review. She is currently working on her second novel.

Ellah Allfrey is Deputy Editor of Granta. Before joining Granta, she was Senior Editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House where she continued to published history titles as well as introducing a list of young African writers including Brian Chikwava, Dinaw Mengestu and Peter Akinti. She sits on the board of the Writers’ Centre Norwich, and this year is on the judging panel of both the David Cohen Prize and the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her introduction to Woman of the Aeroplanes by Kojo Laing (Pearson, African Writers Series) is published this February. A Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, Allfrey was awarded an OBE in 2011 for services to the publishing industry.

On Thursday, February 9th at 7 PM, Okparanta will join Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet, for a reading at Prairie Lights.

Season 05
Episode 04
Air date: Thursday, February 9th, at 3 PM CST

On this Lit Show, Ben Marcus discusses his new novel, The Flame Alphabet. Marcus is the author of two previous books, The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women, and the co-author [...]]]>

Season 05
Episode 04
Air date: Thursday, February 9th, at 3 PM CST

On this Lit Show, Ben Marcus discusses his new novel, The Flame Alphabet. Marcus is the author of two previous books, The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women, and the co-author (with artist Matthew Ritchie) of The Father Costume.

Marcus’s work centers (or de-centers) around language, mythology, and a perverse rationality that leaves the reader equal parts befuddled and captivated. The Age of Wire and String matches the prose style of technical writing and travel books to surreal, dreamy anecdotes and definitions. Notable American Women is no less experimental, turning familiar postmodern tropes (such as the inclusion of the author as character) inside-out.

Marcus will chat with co-host Ben Mauk about The Flame Alphabet, a novel in which a mysterious epidemic has caused language to become toxic.

On Thursday, February 9th, Ben Marcus will read at Prairie Lights in Iowa City, 7 PM.

This Lit Show spotlights Ink Lit Mag, a new student-run literary journal at the University of Iowa. Ink‘s publishers discuss the origins and future of the magazine, as well as their vision for its role in the community.

On-air guests include [...]]]> Season 05
Episode 02
Air date: 1/25/2012 at 2 PM

This Lit Show spotlights Ink Lit Mag, a new student-run literary journal at the University of Iowa. Ink‘s publishers discuss the origins and future of the magazine, as well as their vision for its role in the community.

On-air guests include Michael Leali, Ink executive board Member; Sevy Perez, Ink co-editor and chief creative director of Issue One; Alyssa Rhodes, poetry editor; Audrey Smith, Ink executive board member; and Danny Khalastchi, Ink‘s publisher, who is the Assistant Director of the Undergraduate Certificate in Writing Program.

This episode also features Alyssa Rhodes reading selected student work from the magazine, and Danny Khalastchi shares one of poet Marvin Bell’s contributions to Ink‘s first issue: “Thirteen Statements About Writing Poetry (Work-In-Progress).”

GUEST BIOS

Daniel Khalastchi is the Assistant Director of the Undergraduate Certificate in Writing Program at the University of Iowa and the author of Manoleria, winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award for poetry. A co-founder and editor of Rescue Press (an independent publisher of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid collections), Daniel serves as the faculty advisor and publisher of Ink Lit Mag.

Michael Leali is a senior studying English and Secondary Education from Oswego, IL. He is also in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Track and a minor in music. For the past two years, Michael has been the IWLLC RA and has loved every moment of it.

Sevy Perez was born and raised around Chicago. His creative philosophy is rooted in music. In high school he received formal editor and design training from Ball State University and Indiana University, and he came to the University of Iowa because David Foster Wallace made him want to be a writer, among other things. Sevy is in the middle of creating his own major in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and is also minoring in Philosophy and declaring for the new Undergraduate Certificate in Writing.

Alyssa Rhodes is originally from Denver, but just moved back from Singapore. A first-year student here at the UI, she is the Poetry Editor at Ink Lit Mag and is majoring in journalism.

Audrey Smith is a sophomore at the University of Iowa and is a Resident Assistant for the Iowa Writers’ Living Learning Community. She is studying English and is part of the Creative Writing Track.

On this Lit Show, fiction writer and essayist Sara Levine discusses her debut novel, Treasure Island!!!, a full-throated, subversive, and very funny homage to Robert Louis Steveson’s classic. We talked about how she came to the original Stevenson classic, how to craft an [...]]]> Season 05
Episode 01
Air date: 1/23/2011, 2PM CST

On this Lit Show, fiction writer and essayist Sara Levine discusses her debut novel, Treasure Island!!!, a full-throated, subversive, and very funny homage to Robert Louis Steveson’s classic. We talked about how she came to the original Stevenson classic, how to craft an unreliable narrator, and the American obsession with self-help books.

Levine, who was formerly a professor at the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, has published short fiction in American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her collection, Short Dark Oracles, was a finalist for the 2010 Caketrain Chapbook Competition.

In the last third of the program, Sara Levine reads a selection from the book.

Episode 15

Air date: 12/7/2011, 2 PM CST

Students and alumni of Iowa’s graduate writing programs share new work. Featuring Charlene Choi, Michael Fauver, Deborah Kennedy, B.J. Love, Anna Morrison, Rebecca Rukeyser, Montreux Rotholtz, and Ben Shattuck.

Authors and Works

Rebecca Rukeyser, from “The Chinese Barracks”

Montreux Rotholtz, five poems

Episode 14

Air date: 11/17/2011

On this Lit Show, University of Iowa students Jessica Dvoracek and Kallie Holt turn the microphone on the program’s host, Joe Fassler. They asked him about his experiences interviewing touring authors at KRUI, as well as his ongoing work as fiction writer, journalist, and musician. Fassler read the [...]]]> Season 04

Air date: 11/17/2011

On this Lit Show, University of Iowa students Jessica Dvoracek and Kallie Holt turn the microphone on the program’s host, Joe Fassler. They asked him about his experiences interviewing touring authors at KRUI, as well as his ongoing work as fiction writer, journalist, and musician. Fassler read the opening of his short story, “Canada Goose,” and performed two original songs.

Dvoracek and Holt are two students participating in Iowa’s “American Lives” course, in which undergraduates profile writers who live in Iowa City. Each semester, the students prepare their original research and multimedia documentation for the UNESCO City of Literature iPhone app.