Esteemed lit magazine/publisher and Mission Creek Festival alum, Granta Magazine honors the release of its 112th issue tonight (Tue, Sep 6) at Prairie Lights. This magazine release event is part of a series of events surrounding the new issue of Granta. The issue features new writing from several authors regarding the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 [...]

Our literary man on the street, Joe Tiefenthaler, sends us another head’s up. Get thee to Prairie Lights if you feelin’ literate. My memory’s troublesome, but what I remember of the last time I heard Peter Bognanni read in public, he set the stage for an honest religious experience…WWF style. I remember spandex onesie costuming. [...]

A missive from our literary liaison Joseph Tiefenthaler. Meet the very model of a modern music festival. Song and dance.  Check.  Costumes.  Check.  Crowd.  Check.  Dizzying array of events.  Double check.  Readings…??? In many ways the course of literature’s consumption over the past few years mimics that of music, online and on the display screen [...]

Heading into the traditional American weekend of romance, what lessons did we learn from the Super Bowl ads? If we’re to believe the pitch, that men are bound to a mindless life of obligation in which they’re unable to do anything they actually want to do because of the binds imposed on them by…their wife [...]

My goodness, the Conan O’Brien circus just might be coming to an end. NBC announced that it had reached a deal with Conan to release him from his contract, with Friday night (that’s this weekend) being the final installment of Conan O’Brien on the Tonight Show, after just 9 months. The Conan O’Brien and Jay [...]

A unique chance to connect with one of the titans of the American environmental movement takes place on Tuesday night, as John McPhee comes to Iowa City. He’s written 29 books in a 40+ year career that’s seen him elegantly blend journalism with aspects of novelistic writing. His first book, A Sense of Where You [...]

It’s true: there are a lot of writers in Iowa City. Hell, I’m one of them, caught in the endless black hole of trying to hack-it-out, finish a book, and make even a speck of a name for myself. Why do we come here – to Iowa City — out of all of the places we [...]

Iowa City is a literary city, by reputation and definition, so with this unique post-moving Freakin’ Weekend, we salute Thomas Pynchon, one of America’s most reclusive, mysterious, and brilliant authors of the 20th (and now 21st!) century. Pynchon’s first novel, V. came out in 1963, but it is perhaps his next two novels that he [...]

Back in April (ancient history, I know), one-time Iowa City resident Sterling Andrews released a book via Eenie Meenie Records. The book, entitled Gooseberries, features portraits of indie artists from the California music scene, specifically Southern California, where Andrews currently resides in Los Angeles. Part art project, part piece of art, Gooseberries features a series [...]

So Mission Creek 2009 is done, leaving us exhausted, relieved, and ready to not think about music at all for at least a week. Fortunately for us, baseball season is here! This young season, not yet a week old, has already been marred by tragedy, leaving the baseball world devastated. No word yet on how [...]