The Lit Show

Episode 0510: Iowa Writers Read

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:22:35 +0000

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

Episode 0509: Rescue Press

Joe Fassler — Fri, 11 May 2012 21:06:40 +0000

Featuring Nick Dybek, Daniel Khalastchi, Madeline McDonnell, and Vinnie Wilhelm.

Episode 0508: Nicholson Baker

admin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:26:33 +0000

On this Lit Show, co-host Ben Mauk speaks with Nicholson Baker, author of House of Holes: A Book of Raunch.

Episode 0506: Heidi Julavits

admin — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:15:17 +0000

On this Lit Show, The Believer founding editor Heidi Julavits discusses her new novel, The Vanishers.

Episode 0507: Iowa Writers Read

Joe Fassler — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:48:31 +0000

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

Episode 0504: An Interview with Ben Marcus

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:48:17 +0000

On this Lit Show, Ben Marcus discusses his new novel, The Flame Alphabet with co-host Ben Mauk.

Episode 0503: Chinelo Okparanta and Ellah Allfrey

admin — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:11:33 +0000

On this Lit Show, Chinelo Okparanta discusses her short story “America,” included in Granta‘s “Exit Strategies” issue. With Granta Deputy Editor Ellah Allfrey.

An Interview with Ink Magazine

admin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 01:44:11 +0000

Episode 0502: On this Lit Show, the publishers of Ink Lit Mag discuss their new student-run literary journal.

An Interview with Sara Levine

admin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:49:42 +0000

On this Lit Show, Sara Levine discusses Treasure Island!!!

Episode 0415: Iowa Writers Read

admin — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 01:17:12 +0000

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.

Episode 0414: An Interview with Lit Show Host Joe Fassler

admin — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:14:10 +0000

University of Iowa students Jessica Devorcek and Kallie Holt interview Lit Show host Joe Fassler.

Episode 0412: Peter Orner (11-16-2011)

admin — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:35:21 +0000

On this Lit Show, Peter Orner discusses Love and Shame and Love, his second novel.

Episode 0412: Michael Martone (11-11-2011)

admin — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:36:24 +0000

On this Lit Show, co-host Ben Mauk speaks with Michael Martone about teaching, writing, and the Midwest.

Episode 0411: An Interview with Chuck Klosterman

Joe Fassler — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:04:12 +0000

On this Lit Show, Chuck Klosterman discusses his novel The Visible Man.

Episode 0409: Colson Whitehead (11-02-2011)

Joe Fassler — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:36:55 +0000

On this Lit Show, co-host Ben Mauk speaks with Colson Whitehead about his new novel, Zone One.

Episode 0410: IWP’s International Writers Read (11-01-2011)

Joe Fassler — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 00:38:43 +0000

On this Lit Show, writers from the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program read fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.

This episode, part one of a two-part series, featured, in alphabetical order: Park Chansoon (South Korea), Naseer Hassan (Iraq), Usha K. R. (India), Fabienne Kanor, (France), Alexandra Petrova (Russia), Ogochukwu Promise (Nigeria), and Milena Oda (Germany).

Episode 0408: Josh Rolnick (10-26-2011)

admin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:10:17 +0000

Josh Rolnick discusses his short story collection Pulp and Paper, this year’s recipient of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award (University of Iowa Press). Pulp and Paper was selected for the honor by Yiyun Li.

Episode 0407: Susan Orlean (10-20-2011)

admin — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:12:12 +0000

On this Lit Show, Susan Orlean discusses Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend.

Episode 0406: Graphic Language

Joe Fassler — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:02:25 +0000

An interview with Erika Jo Brown, the University of Iowa Museum of Art’s Manager of Marketing and Communications, about Graphic Language: The Art and Literature of Comics.
Fiction: Josephine Rowe and Dina Viergutz.
Poetry: Stephanie Goehring and Jeff Griffin.

On this Lit Show, Erika Jo Brown discusses Graphic Language: The Art and Literature of Comics, an exhibition by the University of Iowa Museum of Art. The show presents a history of what we, today, call comics: a catch-all term that’s dilated to include graphic novels and newsstand superheroes and syndicated funnypages and ambitious works of illustrated literature.

Organized chronologically, this exhibition lets us watch comics come of age. We see the form’s nascent stirrings in 18th century sequential artwork, the cheeky verve of 19th century newspaper polemics, the pinnacle of the Sunday Comic Strip in the early 20th century, through the blood-spattered, hormonal heyday of Entertainment Comics in the 1940s, the rise of the costumed crusader in the 1950s, up through contemporary masters like Joe Sacco and Robert Crumb. One thing that makes the exhibition thrilling is that it features original comic artworks—not the reduced-scale reproductions found in newspapers and printed books. You can pore over a full-size Little Nemo strip inked by Winsor McCay’s hand, say, or an original Prince Valiant mockup, twenty times the size of the Sunday strip. On this scale, the artistry and effort put into every panel is evident: you can see each inked pencil line, each erasermark, text edits quite literally cut and pasted with tiny shears.

Erika Jo Brown, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is Manager of Media and Communications at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Graphic Language is running at the Black Box theatre here in the Iowa Memorial Union through December 11th.

This episode also featured fiction by Josephine Rowe and Dina Nayeri Viergutz, poetry by Stephanie Goehring and Jeff Griffin. Excerpts read by Stephanie Goehring and Dina Nayeri Viergutz below (only a portion of this broadcast was recorded).

Episode 0405: Justin Torres (9-21-11)

Joe Fassler — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:54:20 +0000

Justin Torres discusses We the Animals, his first novel.

Episode 0404: Cate Kennedy (9-14-11)

Joe Fassler — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 03:12:51 +0000

On this Lit Show, Cate Kennedy discusses her novel The World Beneath.

Air date: Wednesday, September 14th at 2 PM CST Live Stream

Episode 0402: Alexander Maksik (9-7-2011)

Joe Fassler — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 21:33:01 +0000

Alexander Maksik, a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a University of Iowa Provost’s Fellow in fiction, discusses his first book, You Deserve Nothing: A Novel.

Air date: Wednesday, September 7th at 2 PM CST.

Episode 0401: Benefit for Dean Young (8-31-2011)

Joe Fassler — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 03:08:33 +0000

Poets Dora Malech, Danny Khalastchi, Marc Rahe, and James Longley appear on The Lit Show to read poems and speak about Dean Young as a writer and teacher.

Air date: Wednesday, August 31st, at 1PM CST [Live stream]

Episode 0308: Alphabet Soup (4-26-2011)

Joe Fassler — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 21:23:12 +0000

A roundtable of writers from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, featuring Rawaan Alkhatib, Andrew Bates, Henry Finch, Jordan Glubka, Jeff Griffin, Carmen Machado, Sam McPhee, Amy Parker, and Margaret Ross.

Andrew Bates: from “Be Still Now, Brother”

Amy Parker: from “The Balcony”

Carmen Machado: from “Difficult at Parties”

Rawaan Alkhatib: four poems

Henry Finch: three PoemSongs, “A Continuous Form,” “Survey,” and “Cushioning”

Sam McPhee: from “The Cyclops has Pink Eye”

Jeff Griffin: two poems

Jordan Glubka: “Do Not Read This Until Your 18th Birthday”

Episode 0205: Lan Samantha Chang (9-28-2010)

admin — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 04:38:28 +0000

All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost is Lan Samantha Chang’s third book. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she’s the recipient of many literary honors including the the Banta Award for Literature, and the PEN/Hemingway/Ucross Prize. Her award-winning first collection, Hunger and Other Stories, and debut novel, Inheritance, both won widespread acclaim and have been translated across the world. Her shorter work was selected for Best American Short Stories in 1994 and 1996. And she’s been director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop since 2006—an experience she’s plumbed for her new novel.

All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost begins at The School in Bonneville, Michigan, a fictional Graduate MFA program with similarities to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Roman, a young poetry student, is handsome and ambitious, obsessed with achieving artistic greatness and worldly recognition. His cerebral counterpart Bernard lives an ascetic life, corresponding by mail with other authors from his shoebox apartment and privately toiling on a single long poem. Both young men, with the other students at The School, vie for the affections of Miranda Sturgis, an eccentric faculty luminary who allures pupils with her talent and fame but terrorizes them with her mercurial disposition and brutal criticism.

At first, the novel extols, and often wryly critiques, the triumphs and pratfalls of Workshop life. But as the students mature, the novel grows in seriousness with them. In its 200 pages, All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost charts a series of lives lived in the name of art, and maps their vastly different outcomes. The book poses serious questions about the value of artistic sacrifice, the dubious gift of early promise, the patronage and nepotism of the academy, and the definition of artistic greatness. Finally, it moves beyond poetry altogether as we watch our characters meet their human fates, address the slow onset of their mortality, the wax and wane and wax again of their close friendships over time, and the regrets and longings that unspool in the wake of death.