http://www.writinguniversity.uiowa.edu en writinguniversity@gmail.com Copyright 2012 2012-02-01T22:18:00-06:00 http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/entry/examined_life/ The University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine will host "The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine," a three-day conference, April 19th - 21st, focusing on the links between the science of medicine and the art of writing. The conference hopes to foster a collaboration and discussion involving the role of writing in medical education. Sessions will focus on the benefits of writing throughout a lifelong career as a physician, as well as the role of creative writing in patient care. Participants will be able to take advantage of skill-building sessions on writing, editing and publishing creative work. Many of the events are open to the public, although registration includes conference materials, access to all sessions, and meals & receptions. Visit the website for more information on The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine. Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, Science/Medical Writing 2012-02-01 http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/entry/crossing_a_braided_memoir/ POROI (Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry) is pleased to announce Crossing: A Braided Memoir, a Rhetoric Seminar by Russell Scott Valentino. The seminar will take place on Wednesday, February 1, 2012 11:30am-1pm and the Bowman House on the University of Iowa campus. Crossing: A Braided Memoir employs the compositional technique of the braid to explore the composite themes of mixture, translation (crossing with something on your back), and transgression (crossing the line). Crossing is both physical, as in movement from one place to another, one shore to another, and metaphysical, as in what happens when you die. It also holds a wealth of figurative associations from the mixing of cultures and languages to religions and races. It is movement across thresholds of various kinds, barriers, borders. It is bastardization when opposed to purity. Visit the POROI website to download a PDF of the paper. 2012-01-27 http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/entry/ui_expands_writing_options_for_undergrads/ The University of Iowa's new Frank N. Magid Undergraduate Writing Center now offers an undergraduate writing certificate to all students, regardless of their major. The center, housed within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, officially began its work last semester following a $1 million commitment from UI graduate Marilyn Magid in honor of her late husband, Frank, a fellow UI alumnus. But the plans for providing more options for undergraduate students, have been in the works for some time, said Helena Dettmer, an associate dean for Undergraduate Programs and Curriculum and a professor of Classics at UI. “It occurred to me that one of the reasons students might want to come here is because of the school’s great emphasis on writing,” Dettmer said. “We decided we needed a credential that students could earn as undergraduates.” Read more... English Department, Teaching & Learning 2012-01-25 http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/entry/novel_conceived_at_the_ui_begins_week_of_writing_university_streams/ Sara Levine's Treasure Island!!!, which she conceived while teaching nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa, will open a week of live literary streams on the writinguniversity.org website. "I was teaching nonfiction at the University of Iowa and a colleague asked me which essayists I liked, and I mentioned Robert Louis Stevenson," says Levine, explaining how she came to write the book. "I was thinking of Stevenson's essays but he said 'Oh, Treasure Island.'" Thinking it might be fun to write an essay about not liking the book, Levine picked up a copy and found its swashbuckling style enjoyable. -from an The NWI Times article The events, originating at 7 p.m. in Prairie Lights Books will be: --Levine on Monday, Jan. 23. --Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole reading from Sacred Trash on Tuesday, Jan. 24. --Roger Rosenblatt reading from the memoir Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief and Small Boats on Friday, Jan. 27. Read more Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction 2012-01-17 http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/entry/the_iowa_review_awards_now_accepting_submissions/ Each January, The Iowa Review holds a writing contest in Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction. Judges for the 2012 Iowa Review Awards are Timothy Donnelly (poetry), Ron Currie, Jr. (fiction), and Meghan Daum (nonfiction). Winners receive $1,500; first runners-up receive $750. Winners and runners-up are published in our December 2012 issue. Contest rules and submission guidelines Current students, faculty, or staff of the University of Iowa are not eligible to enter the contest. Work is ineligible to win the contest if it is slated for publication before December 2012, whether in another magazine or as part of a book, or if it has been named winner or runner-up in any other contest. Judges are instructed not to award the prize to entrants with whom they have had a personal or professional relationship. Despite reading the entries with author names removed, judges may sometimes be able to guess the identity of the entrant. Even if they can't tell during the judging process, they have the right to change their decision if it turns out that the entrant is someone with whom there is any appearance of conflict of interest. Therefore, the Iowa Review advises entrants not to enter the contest if the judge is someone they know personally or have worked with professionally. Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, Iowa Review 2012-01-12 http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/entry/iwp_announces_new_website/ The International Writing Program is proud to announce the launch of its newly redesigned website, providing information about the IWP’s many programs and initiatives in a new attractive location. Through strategic partnerships with many international organizations, and frequently with the support of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, the IWP fosters relationships and understanding between international and American writers; provides joint distance learning opportunities for American and international students; and publishes materials that bring established and new international voices to a broad audience. While the URL remains the same, you’ll notice that the redesigned site makes it easier than ever for an extended network of readers, writers, teachers, and students to explore the cache of literary work, presentations, interviews, films, news items, and collaborations accumulated over the IWP’s 45-year history. Visit the new website here: IWP website International Writing Program 2011-12-27 http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/entry/well_endowed_sea_captains_and_housewives_zen_weed_whacking_venice_but_not_v/ Well-endowed sea captains and housewives, Zen weed-whacking, Venice but not Venice, once upon a time in a darkened room, and eyewitness haiku. The Iowa Review announces their Winter 2011/12 issue, featuring photography by Christopher Beckman and essays, stories, and poems by Lia Purpura, George Eklund, Chris Offutt, Martha Collins, Craig Reinbold, the winners of the 2011 Iowa Review Awards, and more... Add a little Iowa to your fireside reading! Check out The Iowa Review website for online selections and the Editor's Note. 2011-12-20 http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/entry/lindquist_vennum_prize_for_poetry/ Milkweed Editions and the Lindquist & Vennum Foundation are pleased to announce the establishment of the Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry. This annual regional prize—open to poets currently residing in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, or Wisconsin—will award $10,000 as well as a contract for publication to the author of the winning manuscript. Finalists for the prize will be selected by the editors of Milkweed Editions, with the winner to be selected by an independent judge who will be named annually and chosen from among the ranks of eminent regional and national writers. The first annual prize-winning collection of poems will be announced in April 2012 and published in November 2012. This year, the judge will be Peter Campion, the author of two collections of poems, Other People (2005) and The Lions (2009), both from the University of Chicago Press, as well as a monograph on the painter Mitchell Johnson, published in 2004 by Terrence Rogers Fine Arts. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches in the M.F.A. program at the University of Minnesota, and lives in Minneapolis. Milkweed Editions is one of the nation’s leading independent publishers, with a mission to identify, nurture and publish transformative literature, and build an engaged community around it. The Lindquist & Vennum Foundation was established by the Minneapolis-headquartered law firm of Lindquist & Vennum, PLLP, and is a donor-advised fund of The Minneapolis Foundation. This partnership between Milkweed Editions and the Lindquist & Vennum Foundation will celebrate poets for their artistic contributions, and bring outstanding regional writers to a national stage. For more information regarding eligibility and submission, please visit the Lindquist & Vennum Prize page on our website. 2011-12-12 http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/entry/we_wanted_to_be_writers_live_from_prairie_lights/ In this video, Eric Olsen reads from We Wanted to Be Writers at Live from Prairie Lights. We Wanted to be Writers is a rollicking and insightful blend of original interviews, commentary, advice, gossip, anecdotes, analyses, history, and asides with nearly thirty graduates and teachers at the now legendary Iowa Writers' Workshop between 1974 and 1978. Among the talents that emerged in those years-writing, criticizing, drinking, and debating in the classrooms and barrooms of Iowa City-were the younger versions of writers who became John Irving, Jane Smiley, T.C. Boyle, Michelle Huneven, Allan Gurganus, Sandra Cisneros, Jayne Anne Phillips, Jennie Fields, Joy Harjo, Joe Haldeman, and many others. It is chock full of insights and a treasure trove of inspiration for all writers, readers, history lovers, and anyone who ever "wanted to be a writer." 2011-12-07 http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/entry/poetry_opened_doors_wide_for_eduardo_corral/ "'These people who are characters in my poems, if I wrote them well enough, you can experience what they're living through, what they're going through,' he said. 'It's like a moment of stillness in the chaos, so you can see people's faces, almost in slow motion, as they pass you by.'" In this Arizona Republic profile on 2011 Whiting Award winner Eduardo C. Corral, he describes his journey becoming a poet, from discovering poetry through a school assignment on Beowulf, to his time at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Corral was in Uruguay this fall as part of an international-writers program run by the University of Iowa when he received the e-mail from the Whiting Foundation telling him he'd won the award. "'I have a dream,' he said, 'of taking my nieces and nephews to the library, going to the bookshelf, pulling [my book] out and saying, 'Who is this?' '" Read more: Poetry opened doors wide for Eduardo Corral Alumni, Poetry, International Writing Program, Iowa Writers' Workshop 2011-11-28