We regret the passing, on April 11, 2024, of the distinguished Romanian author and critic Dan Cristea, who served as the editor in chief of the Luceafărul de Dimineață cultural monthly. In addition to being an alum of the 1985 Fall Residency, Cristea received his PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa.
Writer, translator, teacher and activist, Professor Maureen Freely teaches English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK, where she has been instrumental in shaping the pedagogies of Creative Writing as a field. Since March this year she is also the President of English PEN, with which she has worked, over the past 15 years, on issues of freedom of expression in Turkey, speaking out on behalf of imprisoned writers and censored journalists. Her activism extends to issues of first-generation feminism and gender issues within the family structure. Freely is the author of seven novels, including Mother’s Helper, The Life of the Party, and most recently, Sailing through Byzantium, which made the Sunday Times Book of the Year list in 2013. Her translations of five books by novelist Orhan Pamuk laid ground for his Nobel Prize in Literature (2006), cementing her international reputation as a translator and authority on Turkish literature and culture in Anglophone countries. Freely writes regularly for the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent and the Sunday Times on issues of feminism, family, Turkish culture and politics and contemporary writing, and is also a contributor to the BBC’s cultural programming.
Meet Maureen Freely in Iowa City
From September 22-27 Freely will be the Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa and a guest of the International Writing Program, with support from the MFA in Literary Translation, the Division of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures and the Gender, Women’s and Sexualities Studies Program.
Her events include:
- Tuesday, Sept. 23, 5:00 pm: A reading from her work at Prairie Lights (15 South Dubuque St.)
- Wednesday, Sept. 24, 12 pm: Brown bag lunch with IWP writers and MFA Translation students (430 N. Clinton St.)
- Friday, Sept. 26, 10 am: Join Freely for coffee, bagels, and a casual conversation and Q&A about her creative writing process and how she was able to make her art into a career (430 N. Clinton St.)
- Friday, Sept. 26, 7:00 pm: Freely will give the final talk of the Banned Books Week/Intellectual Freedom Festival—dealing with the global literary community’s responses to censorship, surveillance and intellectual property rights—in Meeting Room A at the Iowa City Public Library (123 South Linn St.)
While in Iowa City, Freely will also visit a variety of undergraduate courses at the University of Iowa.
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