@ Shambaugh House

The IWP is delighted to announce a special visitor to our program, and to our town. On Sunday, November 6th, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka will take part in two public events.

1) At 3:00 pm in Shambaugh Auditorium (Main Library), Soyinka will be presented with the Rex Honey African Studies Program Lectureship Award at a ceremony in which he will lecture and sign books.

2) At 7:30 pm, he will give a reading at the Englert Theatre in downtown Iowa City.

Both events are free and open to the public.

Wole Soyinka (Playwright, Poet, Novelist, and Essayist ): Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, Wole Soyinka has published more than thirty works, and continues to be active on various international artistic and Human Rights organizations. A Yoruba born in Western Nigeria and educated in Ibadan, Wole Soyinka continued his studies at the University of Leeds, England, earning an Honours degree in English, then joined the Royal Court Theatre, London, as a play-reader. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller grant and returned to Nigeria, where he researched theatre, and founded two theatre companies. 

Soyinka’s plays include The Swamp Dwellers; The Lion and the Jewel; The Trials of Brother Jero; Jero’s Metamorphosis; A Dance of the Forests; Kongi’s Harvest; Madmen and Specialists; The Strong Breed; The Road; Death and the King's Horseman; A Play of Giants; Requiem for a Futurologist. 

Soyinka has written two novels, The Interpreters and Season of Anomy. Autobiographical works include The Man Died: Prison Notes; AKE, The Years of Childhood; IBADAN, The Penkelemes Years and You Must Set Forth at Dawn. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African World and Art, Dialogue and Outrage while his political and other thematic writings appear in The Open Sore of a Continent; The Burden of Memory, Muse of Forgiveness and his BBC Reith Lectures published as The Climate of Fear. His poems are collected in Idanre and Other Poems; Poems from Prison; A Shuttle in the Crypt; Ogun Abibiman; Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems; SAMARKAND and Other Markets I have Known. 

Wole Soyinka has won numerous civic and professional awards, held several university positions, and still lectures extensively. He is currently Professor Emeritus in Comparative Literature, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, and President’s Professor at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.

The IWP is taking creative writing abroad, virtually. For the past few years we’ve been developing a distance learning program in order to better and more continually reach the international community. The program utilizes the latest hardware and software in information technology to host events and classes that are delivered free of charge to international locations ranging from Haiti and Scotland to New Zealand and Iraq. All are based in Iowa City, and local writers lead each class in conjunction with an international instructor, usually a former IWP resident. Full courses are available to University of Iowa students either as credit or non-credit. This semester the IWP has offered creative writing seminars to students in the Gaza Strip via direct video conference and full classes on Young Adult Fiction and Graphic Novels to students in Egypt and Spain. Those who might be interested in Young Adult Fiction should note that the class is still enrolling for free, and that all are invited to take part. Direct questions to Jimmy O’Brien at james-obrien@uiowa.edu.  In the upcoming months the IWP will offer additional courses and events centered on the relationship between creative writing international trans-cultural issues with the intent of fostering a deeper dialogue between nations.

With web-enabled video chat systems like Elluminate Live! at our disposal, the IWP is able to recreate the community found in traditional workshop settings. Students and instructors can see each other face to face in real-time, and engage in the same rapid-fire conversation that creates constructive seminars and a sense of community. Most full courses are additionally supported by ICON, The University of Iowa’s learning management system. Often used in traditional classroom settings as a repository for course documents and assignment drop-off, ICON’s potential as a full-scale classroom becomes realized when employed in distance learning—students interact regularly via message boards, instructors post videos that students respond to, and other multimedia, movie trailers to PowerPoint’s, are continually accessible. The result is a learning environment that mirrors the traditional in-person format in terms of its sense of community, but allows for additional points of reference and resources to engage students who may live thousands of miles apart.

In much the same manner, the IWP’s more condensed programs provide short-term learning opportunities to those interested in the creative arts. These take the form of Direct Video Conferences (DVCs) that are hosted by University of Iowa’s IT services in a specially designed multimedia room. Using the highest speed internet connection available, IT is able to transfer high definition video and sound from Iowa City to any technologically capable location in the world. The IWP has delivered one-time literary readings to several locations and, in the near future, will connect acclaimed American writers and universities in The United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, and Iraq for individual virtual readings.

 Each semester, we offer five week intro to creative writing seminars, often to young adults, in partnership with regional NGOs and nonprofits such as AmidEast. These are designed to give young people who have expressed an interest in creative writing the opportunity to experience workshop and exchange ideas with peer writers and experienced instructors on a weekly basis. Recently, the IWP has partnered with institutions in Jordan and the Gaza Strip to run such courses.

As the IWP’s distance learning program continues to broaden its reach and expand its offerings we hope to involve as many residents, writers, and community members as possible. To stay informed of our events and plans make sure to watch this blog and our website, or contact the DL coordinator, Jimmy O’Brien, at james-obrien@uiowa.edu for more information about classes and events both this and coming semesters.

This film, produced by the American Embassy in Beirut and aired a few years ago, features Between the Lines 2008 student Ali Awarke and contains pictures of the BTL 2008 participants. (Arabic audio, no subtitles)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1iO_DSDTfA

Video has surfaced of the 2011 Jaipur Literary Festival, including the discussion, "Pamuk and the Art of the Novel," between IWP alumni Chandrahas Choudhury and Orhan Pamuk.  Check it out here!

When the young psychologist Guesly Michel came to Iowa City from Port-au Prince this summer to learn about writing as a therapeutic procedure (the Patient Voice program at the UI Hospitals and Clinics has had a similar program for a number of years), he was by his own admission new to the game. Two weeks into his stay here, as one of his daily assignments for the ISWF class "Memoirs of Illness and Health" he took, out came a vignette, an 'amniotic memory' of sorts—and also Guesly's very first attempt at writing in English. And yesterday his piece appeared in the UI's arts bulletin, The Daily Palette! Beau travail, Guesly!

In related news, a volume of 15 Haitian writers responding to the January 12th 2010 earthquake is forthcoming from 91stMBooks/AHB.

With the August humidity in its finest form, we give you something to stay inside for: the writers of the 2010 Fall Residency!

With 38 writers from more than 30 countries, you'll want to stay involved as we run through a slate of nearly 80 events in 80 days, in Iowa City, across the state of Iowa, and through the U.S. Keep track of our courses, panel lectures, film screenings, and public readings at our website, http://iwp.uiowa.edu.

Old friend and IWP alumnus Etgar Keret is among the writers from both sides of the divide who have recently commented on the tension between Turkey and Israel in the wake of the Mavi Marmara clash, in the Turkish paper Zaman.

(Thanks to the indispensable Common Review for the pointer)