MAKEYOUROWNIWP

You are almost asleep in front of the computer. Your inbox is full (again), but you are so tired. You do not want to read another email on this long and endless day. But, wait, you have received an email about an invitation... From the corner of the eye, you read the last word in a long subject: #IWP. <img src= "http://www.poetronica.net/IWP/images/EM.png" alt="What are you going to do?"> So... [[Wait a minute. What is the IWP?]] [[You open it.]] [[You delete it and go to bed.]]

You force your eyes to read the following: <img src= "http://www.poetronica.net/IWP/images/EMAIL.png" alt="OMG!"> [[You think it's a joke, so you get back to work]] [[You read it again]]

Good luck writing that stupid article about some time waster (but hey you have to pay the bills!). You are writing a couple of words but... [[You can't focus and read the email again.]] <img src= "http://www.poetronica.net/IWP/images/EMAIL.png" alt="OMG!"> You do not need another distraction so... [[You delete the email.]] <img src= "http://www.poetronica.net/IWP/images/DELETE.png" alt="If It Sounds Too Good to Be True, It Is">

<img src= "http://www.poetronica.net/IWP/images/EMAIL.png" alt="What are you going to do?"> You blink. S-l-o-w-l-y. You cannot believe it. Well... [[Yes, you are the most awesome writer in the whole world!]] [[Actually, you do not believe it.]]

Well, you are not in your bed to sleep but to continue #working and #working. <img src= "http://www.poetronica.net/IWP/images/GAMEOVER.jpg" width="800" height="600" alt="GAME OVER">

You delete the e-mail and forget about it. <img src= "http://www.poetronica.net/IWP/images/GAMEOVER.jpg" width="800" height="600" alt="GAME OVER">

Well, you and another 33 people from 33 countries are feeling exactly the same. <img src= "http://www.poetronica.net/IWP/images/logo.png" width="1000" height="600" alt="IWP"> You go to the IWP website. Yes, this is for real! Your author photo is among... [[the poets, of course!]] [[the fiction (and non-fiction) writers.]] [[none of them; I am a filmmaker.]]

<img src= "http://www.poetronica.net/IWP/images/EMAIL.png" alt="What are you going to do?"> You blink. *SLOW S-l-o-w-l-y. You cannot believe it. [[Actually, you do not believe it.]] [[Yes, you are the most awesome writer in the whole world!]]

You are so excited. In the following weeks you receive a lot of travel preparation emails. You are almost there. Time flies and also you... [[Well, lost your flight.]] [[Arrive in Iowa City after two or maybe more connections.]]

You are so excited. In the following weeks you receive a lot of travel preparation emails. You are almost there. Time flies and also you... [[Arrive in Iowa City after two or maybe more connections.]] [[Well, lost your flight.]]

The next flight will not be available until next month. Also, there is a problem with your visa. So you... [[Arrive in Iowa City after two or maybe more connections.]] [[Give up.]]

The Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids, Iowa is less inspiring than expected. <img src= "http://c27980.r80.cf1.rackcdn.com/business380.com/135180/ei-airport-aerial-view.jpg" alt="CIA"> You grab your bag and walk towards the exit. You see your PEN NAME written on a piece of paper. You are taken to... [[An apartment downtown]] [[The Iowa House Hotel]] [[A cabin in the middle of nowhere]]

<img src= "https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/12122937_1064060533606218_7994585710313704716_n.jpg?oh=b82051507a231229bbb968110ecee3be&oe=56E3DCFD"> Welcome to your empty apartment... [[And welcome to the IWP (and a lot of work) too.]]

<img src= "http://s3-media3.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/5pShHWm8lde2_brlDKVwBg/o.jpg" alt="Iowa House Hotel"> [[And welcome to the IWP (and a lot of work) too.]]

<img src= "http://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/large-log-cabin-upper-city-park-iowa-city-ia-cynthia-woods.jpg"> You are going to do a lot of exercise by walking to every single (official and unofficial) activity... [[And welcome to the IWP (and a lot of work) too.]]

<img src= "https://res.cloudinary.com/roadtrippers/image/upload/c_fill,h_316,w_520/v1377281152/daves-fox-head-tavern-4f5e24d546d09d675b00086b.jpg" alt="Dave's Fox Head Tavern"> #YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN WRITING

Are you going to participate in the panel about... [[Writing in a Culture in Conflict]], [[The Don Dreams On]], [[Feminism with a Little f]], [[The Calling: Writing with Responsibility]], [[Ekphrasis]], [[The Art of Mourning]] or [[Writers on Film]]?

So you are presenting this paper from... A Pakistani poet's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/KHALIQUE_ICPL2015_0.pdf" target="_blank"> "But when it comes to poems, reading those of others or writing my own, there is no escape. There is no regime to be followed, but there can be no sabbatical either. Poetry is the only consistency in my tumultuous life. I write less than many others, but my being hinges on reading and writing verse. With either visible or subtle political content, I saw myself as a romantic poet. I believed in what I had heard as a child—all poetry is love poetry."</a> An Israeli fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/NEEMAN_ICPL2015_0.pdf" target="_blank"> "For me the conflict is the elephant that’s always in the room, whatever room I’m in, and I have to find my place beside him. This external conflict creates a conflict within me. My political views and feelings are situated on the extreme left. I don’t see the conflict in Israel as symmetrical. Its first name–the name of the conflict and the elephant—is ‘Arabs,’ is ‘Occupation,’ is ‘Territorial Occupation.’ And me, even as I oppose the occupation, I belong to the side of the occupiers. And so grows the embarrassment of how to talk about it. Added to this embarrassment is the question of how to talk about it with strangers from 33 foreign countries in a strange land."</a> A Nigerian fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/KOLAWOLE_ICPL2015_0.pdf" target="_blank"> "Literature calls into question on a fundamental level why inequality exists in our society and argues— and in some cases demands—for fairness. It serves as a method of transcending the barrier of time, geography and culture. Literature keeps connecting us across worlds. It offers us hope in the midst of despair. Most importantly, it makes us realise that we are human—all too human.

So you are presenting this paper from... A Brazilian fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/XERXENESKY_Don2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "But most of all, I believe Don Quixote must be read as a celebration. We are living in times absolutely obsessed with realism, with the re-creation of actual events with little fictional intervention, including in literature—metafiction was overshadowed by autofiction; Karl Ove Knausgaard is the biggest literary sensation—and Cervantes’s work remains as a monument of imagination, a celebration of fiction and lying, of the pleasure of inventing stories and seeing giants when all the other serious people, with their perfect eyesight and their well adjusted glasses, will see only windmills."</a> An Austrian fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/PRAAUER_Don2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "Quixote’s journey is a trip through literature, through the mechanics of poetics. La Mancha is just another word for Literature itself. By giving the name of Sancho Panza to a small, fat farmer and by recruiting him as his squire does the author Cervantes himself, disguised as aknight, redefine the things the world is made of. So literature is inventing the world by spelling out words. Quixote gone mad by reading too many books means only to become sane in the world of text. Losing his mind to gain the mighty power of imagination."</a> An Uzbek poet's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/PRAAUER_Don2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "Please, Mr. Don Quixote, do not think, however, that these are Uzbek imitators of Cervantes. No! I only meant that there is a harmony, the detail of description, the strength of the language in their works. Today we live in technical turmoil and amidst the noise of progress. Your or Sancho’s long letters aren’t popular today. We chat with each other on the Internet now, using only one button or a smiley. A poet sitting in the rose garden with a pen in his hand is the most beautiful image of quiet. My teacher told me one day that the only way to fight against a bad book is by writing a good one. This is similar to the words of Sancho Panza who said that “The saddle shouldn’t be punished because of the ass."</a> An Macanese poet's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/YAO__Don2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "If China had more figures like Don Quixote and fewer figures like Ah Q, I think that it could become a better place. Lu Xun once said, according to Chinese traditional maxims, whether the maxim is the Confucian moral "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil and do no evil" or the Taoist guidance of "practice not-doing,” we arrive at the same lesson, which is "to teach people not to act." However, the enterprising spirit of Don Quixote could be a challenge to this conservative tradition.."</a>

So you are presenting this paper from... An Indian poet & fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Potkar_ICPL2015.pdf"> "I have found that many men are averse to ‘women’s literature.’ And many women don’t know what the big deal is about. They live in a bubble, and hence it is this reader and listener across the sections of class, occupation, and preoccupation that I am interested in. He, who might not treat his woman badly, but is bored by any further conversation about it. He, who every time a voice is raised for women will say, “But don’t women also rape?” and “Women also are evil,” and “Women also use the law to their advantage,” and I say, “That is certainly as bad when it happens, but let’s talk statistics."</a> A New Zealander poet's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Aitchison_ICPL2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "From the house where he took her life “I gave him his footsteps,” said the stairs to her upstairs. “I gave him five sharp knocks on my door,” said her bedroom. “I gave him all of my metal,” said the lock on her door. “I gave him her arms floating out towards him,” said her open suitcase. “I gave him her striped curtains, her photos tacked to wallpaper, the silver light shining off her computer screen, I gave him her trees, slashed by wind outside her window, I gave him blackbirds, screaming off the power lines, I gave him the chipped marble waves of her harbour view,” said the house."</a> A Cuban fiction and non-fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/MateoPalmer_ICPL2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "One of the books that most affected me in my childhood was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. A novel from the 19th century, set in cold and faraway Massachusetts during the Civil War, moved me to see with more clarity some of the issues of sexism that I was already experiencing. When I grew up, I went further back, into the Viceroyalty of New Spain in the 17th century, to find Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and her valiant indictment of asinine men. Later on, other characters, such as Jean Rhys’s Antoinette, illuminated the painful road taken to become the madwoman in the attic: female voices that from the most disparate spaces, eras and cultures, spoke to a common, shared experience. The issues of gender discrimination have no borders, though they take on different forms in each context. Literature, with words that may help to heal wounds and open windows to the light, can perform an important role in this process of acknowledging a plenary female identity. In short, it can help some of our most treasured dreams be realized."</a> A Taiwanese fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/CHUNG_ICPL2015.pdf"target="_blank"> "I want to tell women that pain can be transformed, sublimated in the transformation, and thus become an impression of life’s beauty. Such pain prevented me from idling away my life, urging me always to keep writing. Of course, this does not mean that women writers must choose pain, for who would say no to happiness? What I mean is: pain makes us able to see things from others’ perspectives, to see life’s multiplicity of layers, to experience the various ways of being in this wide, wide world. In this way, we can add depth to our writing."</a> A Singaporian fiction and non-fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Balasingamchow_ICPL2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "In a speech at the National Book Awards in the U.S. last year, Ursula K. Le Guin said, “Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.” At its very best, literature coaxes us into caring about imaginary people and situations far removed from our own—worlds in which girls—and boys—can do anything or be anyone. Girls can be boys and boys can be girls—or they can be someone else altogether."</a>

So you are presenting this paper from... A Sri Lankan fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Mendis_ICPL2015.pdf"> "One thing that is clear: being a person, this smallest unit of a bigger, larger peopleness, comes with responsibility. To love. To know. To understand. To be honest. To not turn a blind eye. To reach out when it seems necessary; to abandon your retreat when you feel you are needed. To help each other with our common, confounding humanness. But this responsibility can, sometimes, be exhausting."</a> A Canadian fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Jones_ICPL2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "I identify myself not as a writer who happens to be Black, but as a Black women who happens to be a writer. I say on a panel I don’t even like literature but I like people’s stories, and someone says that seems pretty hardcore, and I say, well sure, I like the youth down at the studio, I like the inmates that call the radio show and read poems with us, that has meaning, but then people say I tried to listen but there’s so much bad language sometimes and I think it’s obscene, and I practically scream, I think it’s obscene that we still put mentally ill people in solitary confinement, and you’re worried about words? If we want to be in the struggle, people come first."</a> An Egyptian fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Eltoukhy_ICPL2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "My formula is: be naïve, but don’t be stupid; be optimistic but also realistic; and spend less time thinking about eternity—eternity kills. I know that this is very difficult, and that’s why political writing is difficult.That’s also why political writing has to be funny, because it doesn’t care about its future or its career, it just cares about speaking to people in order to change their lives. Although political writing has a long heritage, it is not aware of it—just like beggars, homeless people, gypsies and prostitutes. The worst thing in the world is political writing that takes itself too seriously."</a> A Swedish filmmaker and poet's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Silkeberg_ICPL2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "A listening language. The time of the aftermath. It is said that Dante said that writers are those who remember words longer than other people. Maybe, he even said, a little longer. It opens a moment of time. This little. Longer. Before they are erased, forgotten, suppressed, burned, swallowed, appropriated, etc. What to do with this time? “What do you do with your freedom?” a friend told me she was asked when she came back to Sweden after some time in Beirut. A call: to being as much as to speak, to write. And to find out the difference. Between your place in the world and others’. The privileges as a first world citizen. You should not be trusted. You know that. At least. An unwritten poem could be an opening of a field of questions, the time of the questions. Who will speak in it? With courage, fear, rage? What will they say?"</a> An Afghan fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Qaderi_ICPL2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "Perhaps the most difficult struggle for Afghani women writers is how to responsibly give shape to their personal emotions and feelings: for decades they have lived in fear, and their emotions have remained unexpressed. A woman does not talk about herself or about her womanhood and feminine sensibilities. She is always covered in a veil of dust, which effaces both her presence in and absence from the world. Testifying to her presence in the world will itself be a difficult task. But isn’t responsible writing always difficult? It is—and always will be—the duty of art to protect humans and their emotions, feelings and sentiments. Afghani women writers must consider art as the savior of their souls."</a>

So you are presenting this paper from... A Filipino poet's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Katigbak-Lacuesta_ICPL2015_0.pdf" target="_blank"> "Will It takes only a look to stand at attention. Air unlearns wind. Sky learns degrees of blue. Will you be my caprice, and not my Lesson? Let things escape our apprehension. However counterfeit your eyes, they make me true. It takes only a look to stand at attention. But careful now, the courts are in session. Yellow crones do their looking, and their looking through. Will you be my caprice, and not my Lesson? The leap in the blood beats its own red transgression Contradicts with don’t. Double contradicts with do. It takes only a look to stand at attention. Stay a while. Let’s take nothing but this guessing. This young, unsullied air only touch can make untrue. Will you be my caprice, and not my lesson? I can’t be taught. Old nicks know how to listen. Whittle at me—a little—but hurt small. Do it new. It takes only a look to stand at attention. Will you be my caprice, and not my Lesson?"</a> A Hongkonger poet's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/CHENG_ICPL2015_0.pdf" target="_blank"> "Cinema is often thought of as an integrated art, painting as a spatial art, and fiction and poetry as temporal arts. Although Ivy’s paintings eliminate the sense of time, breaking up the 24 frames-per-second cinematic continuity, they are not purely spatial art works. Having removed objects or characters from the film images, she gives expression to the feeling that ‘people change but the past does not’ (or ‘that-hasbeen’)."</a> A Togolese poet and fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/ATAKORA_ICPL2015_0.pdf" target="_blank"> "Personally, I don’t trust this century that shapes the very way we see. That’s why when I write about works of art in my poetry, I distance myself as far as possible from those works that are furiously mediatized and commercialized. Each time I enlist my eyes in an experience, I hope the experience I’m embarking upon will resemble the poetry of that great Greek poet, Homer, as he sought to describe the Achilles’ shield. That famous shield, as you’ll recall, wasn’t intended for the art market, but its artistic value cried out to Homer’s quill."</a> A South Korean fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/KIM_ICPL2015_0.pdf" target="_blank"> "When I get an idea for a story, I have a mental habit of trying to find a piece of music to go along with it. Because of this long-formed habit, the folder on my computer containing my short stories is also filled with titles of compositions that accompany the stories like subtitles. One piece of music for every piece of writing. I never use the same title twice, nor do I ever assign more than one piece of music for a single story. Thus, I have a collection of twenty-five titles to accompany my twenty-five short stories. Of course, I follow a few rules when selecting my music: First, only instrumental pieces with no lyrics. Second, nothing too fast. Third, the instrumental lineup must be simple."</a> A Saudi poet's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/AlJishi_ICPL2015_0.pdf" target="_blank"> "I am not a musician, but I know that there is a color for every tone a piano can make. If we think about light and darkness as a slow, quiet music—or a loud one—we can understand its effect on the painting, and we can color our poem with the inner music. If we study colors psychologically and musically, we can hear the music and see its colors in our mind like a dream. We can make a poem by listening to the music of nature (the one that we can hear or see in its colors), for example: • Red (do) can increase your heartbeat and make you feel warm and active. It is the first color that can catch your eye and make you feel welcome, and maybe you are thinking about blood, roses, active kids, and lipstick or a volcano. The phrase “a red spine” has particular meaning in chronotherapy. • Blue (la) reduces tension and makes you feel quiet, taking care of you with kindness as if it is a gift of comfort from heaven. You may think of the sky, water, early morning, a calm sea or a fairytale. A blue throat is a chakra point that will gain spiritual powers. • Green (fa) reduces anxiety, makes you feel positive, helps you breathe gently when you pronounce it. You may think of grass or trees. A green heart in chakra will increase your love and sense of responsibility."</a> An Estonian fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/KRUUSMAGI_ICPL2015_0.pdf" target="_blank"> "As a writer, words are my instruments. I sharpen them if I need to attack, and I make them soft and mellow when I need to console and heal. The more words I know, the more ways I know to put them together, the more ways to use them I discover. Like a painter who knows which colors to mix together to get the desired result, I know which words to mix to get what I want. The more flexible I am, the further I can go. The stronger I am, the longer I can hold a position. The more I know about my body, the more movements I can use and the more sequences I can invent.."</a>

So you are presenting this paper from... A Turkish fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Oguz_ICPL2015.pdf"> "In the face of loss, the urge to be healed can become a moral issue. Well, how and when can the question of “healing” pop up, let’s say, after a mass death? When do witnesses begin to think about purification of the body and the senses after a suicide bomber explodes herself/himself, not only in the middle of a crowd but also in your head? What do we understand from the word “healing” really? Is it the ability to comprehend loss in such a way that it doesn’t haunt you anymore, and so that you are free, cleansed, and purified? Is that possible? Is it an epiphanic and cathartic moment where death and life and existence reveal themselves “as such” so that you are healed? Is that possible? Or is it only a capacity to bargain? To calculate? To exchange loss with a portion of comprehension and peace of mind so that you can go on? And is that possible? s."</a> A Mexican poet and fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/VILLEDA_ICPL2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "I can keep on counting, but we do not know the numbers. But I have the words. Words with different meanings now. The most painful for me is cachitos. I find this word untranslatable in English. Cachitos in my country, where you can be walking above a clandestine grave, could stand for “fragments of bones,” “small amount of flesh,” “bit of death.” A cachito could be a fingernail or the stirrup bone. But when someone delivers you the smallest bone in the human body, not from your beloved one but anyone else, how can you grieve a cachito of a mistaken body as a result of negligent investigations? How can we make remembrances of victims that are under the category of “unclaimed dead bodies?” And also, when will you have time for mourning when you have to do the work of the police, who never presume the death of missing persons?."</a> An Finnish poet and translator's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Salmela_ICPL2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "I may be dying, but my sentences may outlive me. Shouldn’t it give me a certain kind of consolation? * Most of the writers dearest to me are long since dead. Yet I have the privilege of enjoying their company at will. Shouldn’t this give me certain kind of consolation? * Let me make this clear: I might not have liked them in person. Some of them were well known as quite difficult human beings."</a> A Malaysian fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Haron_ICPL2015.pdf"target="_blank"> "As a writer, I don’t like to end my story by killing any characters, especially the protagonist. To me, death is not exactly the end of any story. Death is part of the story. Death could also be the beginning of something. I often advise my students not to end their story with unnecessary deaths. Popular ways to end a story with death, especially among ‘young’ writers are leukemia, brain tumor and accident (usually a motor vehicle accident)—you know, playing around with deus ex machina."</a> A Canadian poet's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Rose_ICPL2015.pdf" target="_blank"> "Delivery Room Under Renovation for Susan, for Alec Michael The night my water broke, a week early, I held my wide sides and rocked, knowing that before another day came, you would be born... ...Slowly I was drawn by the rope around my hips, dipped in and out of that well of pain. In between I sipped rose tea, marked a few last-minute changes on a manuscript, dripped and dripped and dripped. In the hospital a day later, they handed me you in the recovery room. My abdomen had been stapled shut and I was still numb from the ribcage down. We were in a room full of the knock and rattle of jackhammers.... The nurse, leaning over my bed, said to us they were bringing in a woman to recovery whose baby had just died. She did not need to ask us to stifle our delight. The woman was wheeled in, moaning but sedated. The nurse pulled the curtain around her bed, and I held my newborn, her eyes still glistening with erythromycin, the small white bonnet pulled over her wet hair, and only a thin curtain separated me from the mother whose baby had died: I don’t mean a metaphorical curtain, I mean a thin green hospital curtain on a metal track, and I wished to, but dared not, pull it back."</a>

So you are presenting this paper from... An Irish fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Baume_ICPL2015.pdf"> "But when I write fiction, I still try to approach it with the sensibility of a filmmaker, to conceive of my fictional world as sound and vision as opposed to static letters of the alphabet arranged on a page, to capture something of the magic which used to flicker between the walls of the Ormonde. “Strangers used to gather at the cinema and sit together in the dark,” Angela Carter wrote, “like Ancient Greeks participating in the mysteries, dreaming the same dream in unison."</a> A Cambodian screenwriter and filmmaker's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/LY_ICPL2015.pdf"> "I’ve loved writing since I was eleven or twelve years old. Being born and raised as an only child in my family did give me enough quiet space to be on my own. I spent most of my free time writing on my mother’s Russian-made sewing machine by the window of my bedroom. It had an extended board that gave a perfect balance. All those hours of weeks, of months, of years, of my teenage experience, writing was the only way of telling the stories, of painting the places, of expressing the moods that I witnessed from my boundless imagining world. And music was a great companion that taught me to have more empathy towards my stories, my characters. When I listened to music, I saw images in my head along with its rhythm, I felt its feeling, its emotion, its story, its life. That’s what I have learned: if you seek to understand the feelings of music, you’ll never find them. You just listen to it and let it touch you, let it tell you its stories, let it express its feeling to you.."</a> A Mongolian screenwriter and filmmaker's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/PRAAUER_Don2015.pdf"> "Quixote’s journey is a trip through literature, through the mechanics of poetics. La Mancha is just another word for Literature itself. By giving the name of Sancho Panza to a small, fat farmer and by recruiting him as his squire does the author Cervantes himself, disguised as aknight, redefine the things the world is made of. So literature is inventing the world by spelling out words. Quixote gone mad by reading too many books means only to become sane in the world of text. Losing his mind to gain the mighty power of imagination."</a> An Austrian fiction writer's point of view: <a href="https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Sakhiya_ICPL2015.pdf"> "I think contemporary film adaptation cases openly demonstrate the high presence of criteria dictated by market requirements, industry standards and commercial revenues in the process of creating them -starting from the choice of literary material to the delivery of the final visual product. In many cases, the collaboration of literature and cinema becomes only the producer’s “security belt” and an efficient promotion tool. Most likely, Alfred Hitchcock’s warning, “A good book does not necessarily make a good film,” doesn’t apply to film marketing, as all industry players prove that any well-known work of literature or writer’s name is a powerful marketing tool. Probably Hitchcock didn’t mean all these bestsellers when he said “a good book.” But nowadays, when an average bestseller transforms into its screen equivalent, the producer’s intention to have a “minimum guarantee” for financial revenue is an open secret. In that case, the most we can discuss about the marriage of two media is how faithful the film is to the literary original or how many stars are involved into the film project. By the way, I think there isn’t a theoretically significant difference between narrative cinema and narrative literature."</a>

<img src= "https://janemtuckerdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/prairie-lights-bookstore.jpg" width="500" height="300" alt="Prairie Lights"> Congratulations! You are in Prairie Lights, one of Iowa's largest bookstores and the major independent bookstore in the hometown of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop. The building continues to play a role in its region's literary culture. Susan Sontag, Gloria Steinem, and Annie Proulx are among the notable authors to have participated in events at the bookstore. Seven Nobel Prize winners have also had events at the store: Seamus Heaney, Czesław Miłosz, Derek Walcott, Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, Orhan Pamuk, and John M. Coetzee. What are you reading? Ah, just some [[Poetry]]. An excerpt of my [[Fiction]], of course.

<img src= "http://maps.uiowa.edu/files/maps.uiowa.edu/files/styles/large/public/SHSE-110504-3-TJ-09.jpg?itok=Dpnso_tE" width="500" height="300" alt="Shambaugh House"> Congratulations! You are reading in this amazing place. While a private residence, the Shambaugh House, while a private residence, was host to Amelia Earhart and to Roald Amundson, among others, as part of the University Lecture Series, which Benjamin Shambaugh chaired. After becoming University property, the building at 219 Clinton Street housed the Honors Program. In planning for the new Blank Honors Center in 2001, it was determined the home should be moved to its current location, three blocks to the north. The Shambaugh House now welcomes visitors again as the home of the International Writing Program. What are you reading? Ah, just some [[Poetry]]. An excerpt of my [[Fiction]], of course.

You are going to read... <a href="http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/iiml/turbine/Turbi14/poetry/t1-g1-g1-t3-g1-t1-body-d1.html" target="_blank">A poem titled //Miss Dust//</a> <a href="http://tuckmagazine.com/2015/04/29/poetry-40/" target="_blank">A poem titled //Beirut nights//</a> <a href="http://www.recoursaupoeme.fr/anas-atakora/j%E2%80%99accuse-r%C3%A9ception" target="_blank">A poem titled //J’accuse réception//</a> <a href="http://ziyouz.uz/en/poetry/44-modern-uzbek-poetry/142-guzal-begim" target="_blank">A poem titled //Or//</a> <a href="hhttp://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/CHENG_writing%20sample.pdf" target="_blank">A poem titled //In the Protestant Cemetery of Macao//</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4qnclgcadM" target="_blank">Read? I will performan</a> <a href="http://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/i-shall-not-return-borrowed-dust-2945#.Vks7ffkvfIU" target="_blank">A poem titled //“I shall not return the borrowed dust…”//</a> <a href="http://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/KRUUSMAGI_writing%20sample_1.pdf" target="_blank">A poem titled //We Never Went to the Cemetery//</a> <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/poem-of-the-week-maung-yu-py-under-the-great-ice-sheet-1-2589479" target="_blank">A poem titled //Under the Great Ice Sheet//</a> <a href="http://www.rattle.com/poetry/tag/rachel-rose/" target="_blank">A poem titled //What we heard about the canadians//</a> <a href="http://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/kunstkammer-10577#.VktlE_kvfIU" target="_blank">A poem titled //Kunstkammer//</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfOuJ-m5M14" target="_blank">Read? I will play a video poem</a> <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wfOuJ-m5M14" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <a href="http://www.revistavariopinto.com/nota.php?id=232" target="_blank">A fragment of your poetry book titled //Dodo//</a> <a href="http://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/YAOFeng_full%20sample_Collector.pdf" target="_blank">Some poems from your collection titled //Collector of Dusk//</a>

You are going to read... <a href="http://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/AZERNYI_writing%20sample_part1.pdf" target="_blank"> A fragment of your book of prose //End of recognition//</a> <a href="http://www.junoesq.com/?p=604" target="_blank"> A fragment of your non-fiction piece //My Grandmother's Story//</a> <a href="http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/hennessy-new-irish-writing-dancing-or-beginning-to-dance-30030081.html" target="_blank"> A short story titled //Hennessy New Irish Writing: Dancing, or Beginning to Dance//</a> <a href="http://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/CHUNG_writing_sample2.pdf" target="_blank"> An extract from your novel //Decayed Land//</a> <a href="http://theibtaurisblog.com/2014/11/20/extract-women-of-karantina/" target="_blank"> An extract from your novel //Women of Karantina//</a> <a href="http://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/KIM_writing%20sample.pdf" target="_blank"> An extract from your novel //Summer//</a> <a href="http://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/KIM_writing%20sample.pdf" target="_blank"> A short story titled //The Praegustator Who Spied on the World//</a> <a href="http://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/MATEO_writing_sample_final.pdf" target="_blank"> An extract from your novel //Gelsomina in the White Madhouse//</a> <a href="http://granta.com/The-Sarong-Man-in-the-Old-House-and-an-Incubus-for-a-Rainy-Night/" target="_blank">A short story titled //The Sarong-Man in the Old House, and an Incubus for a Rainy Night//</a> <a href="http://www.nlb.gov.sg/readsingapore/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Lemang-Nan-Sebatang_NisahHaron.pdf" target="_blank">A short story titled //The Lemang Soliloquy//</a> <a href="http://www.sampsoniaway.org/literary-voices/fiction/2015/09/08/excerpt-from-revol-from-hah-by-birgul-oguz/" target="_blank">An extract from your book of short stories titled //Hah//</a> <a href="http://www.sampsoniaway.org/literary-voices/fiction/2015/09/04/mario-superstar-by-armen-of-armenia/" target="_blank">A short story titled //Mario Superstar//</a> <a href="https://vimeo.com/144430059" target="_blank">Read? I will collaborate with the UI Department of Dance</a> <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/144430059" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <a href="http://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/QADERI_writing%20sample_rev_Rain.pdf" target="_blank">A short story titled //If It Would Rain Again//</a> <a href="http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/seizing-cervantes" target="_blank">A short story titled //Seizing Cervantes//</a>

You decide to go to... [[New Orleans]] [[Seattle]] Travel? Sounds great but I have to... [[stay in Iowa]].

#First, you are going to read at... [[Prairie Lights]] or [[Shambaugh House]] (If you are a filmmaker, you have to screen your movie in [[Adler Building]]. #Second, you are going to participate in the [[Iowa City Public Library Presentations]]. #Third, you are going to be a part of an endless tour of symposia and conferences and readings and workshops... Not only in Iowa City but also during your [[Mid-Residency Travel]]. #Fourth, you are going to participate in the <a href="http://www.iowacityofliterature.org/" target="_blank">UI core courses</a>, giving lectures and classes to undergraduate students about International Literature Today. And... #finally, last but not least, you are going shut yourself off to [[write A LOT]] or hang out in [[Dave's Fox Head Tavern]]. But remember... [["All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"]] and, as special recognition for your hard work, your work is going to be translated at the Translation Workshop.

You are a winner of this game (but a loner in real life). <img src= "http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/238/147/c95.jpg">

<img src= "http://quillandscroll.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/adler_w.jpg" alt="Adler Building"> Home to the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Department of Cinema and Comparative Literature, and the Daily Iowan, the Philip D. Adler Journalism and Mass Communication Building establishes a disciplinary quad with the Samuel L. Becker Communication Studies Building. The building is named after Philip David Adler of Davenport, Iowa. While at the University of Iowa in the 1920s, Adler was editor of the Daily Iowan, becoming publisher of the Kewanee Star Courier after graduation. Taking over as the publisher of the Davenport Daily Times in 1949, Adler went on to build a regional newspaper conglomerate. SCREENING DAY! <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6J5DXaY3Du8" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="600" width="800"></iframe> <div class="image_overlay"> <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/43h-gbVbfq4" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="600" width="800"></iframe> <div class="image_overlay">

The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Writing_Program" target="_blank">International Writing Program (IWP)</a> is a writing residency for international artists in the University of Iowa in Iowa City. <img src= "https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/10891890_913870268625246_8976131205876793091_n.jpg?oh=03f972327e22a779186531dff14f4505&oe=56E49AEC"> [[Where is Iowa City? Oh, it's in Iowa. Is Iowa a state in the United States?]] [[Got it.]]

Iowa City is an <a href="http://www.iowacityofliterature.org/" target="_blank">UNESCO City of Literature.</a> So, you get back to your inbox and... [[You open it.]]

<img src= "http://townmapsusa.com/images/maps/map_of_iowa_city_ia.jpg"> [[Iowa? Am I going to Iowa? What is in Iowa?]] No way! I'm definitely not going to this place in the middle of the USA. So, without further hesitation...[[You delete the email.]]

<img src= "https://mikeallegra.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/iowa.jpg"> Sounds like a great place! [[You open it.]] (The email, of course). No way! I'm definitely not going to this place in the middle of the USA... Period. [[You delete the email.]]

<img src= "http://img0.joyreactor.cc/pics/post/full/%D1%85%D0%BE%D1%87%D1%83-%D0%B2-%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BF%D1%83%D1%81%D0%BA-%D0%A1%D0%B8%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%87%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F-%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%B0-%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B9%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7-1210105.jpeg"> But you have... [[Football]] on Saturdays. [[Music]] all day long. and [[HALLOWEEN!]]