IOWA CITY

BY AVIYA KUSHNER

WRITER’S BLOCKS

STROLL THE IOWA CIITY STRRETS, AND CATCH THE SPIRIT OF LEGENDARY WRITERS PAST AND PRESENT

America’s capital city of literary dreams is tucked into the cornfields of Iowa, about an hour’s drive from Quad City International Airport in Moline,  IL. Iowa City has been home to Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut and Denis Johnson, and Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson, author of the bestselling Gilead, and James Alan McPherson, who won the Pulitzer for his masterful short stories, currently live there.

The town’s claim to fame is the world-famous Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, a graduate program that has trained hundreds of literary stars.

In fact, some locals joke that it’s impossible to drive five minutes in any direction without passing the home of a Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award winner.

Workshop students at
Prairie LightsIowa City has a friendly walkable downtown, and everything you’ll want to see is accessible on foot. Park in a public garage, head to Iowa Avenue and look down at the sidewalk, where you’ll find excerpts from famous novels and poems by 49 different writers memorialized in concrete, including words by Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, John Irving and Frank Conroy.

HALFWAY THROUGH the literary walk, Iowa Avenue intersects with Dubuque, where one of the nation’s best bookstores—Prairie Lights (www.prairielights.com)—awaits. “Go to the desk at the back and ask for Jim, Jan or Paul,” says Paul Ingram, the store’s book buyer, and a voracious reader. “It will be impossible to leave without something good.”

Writers of all ages have a soft spot for Prairie Lights, and it’s easy to see why. Downstairs is a well-stocked children’s section, and upstairs, the Java House coffee shop is a great place to people-watch—you’ll see tomorrow’s writing luminaries pecking away at the Great American Novel. About 185 times a year, Prairie Lights hosts free readings that are broadcasted on National Public Radio. Hear a writer live and have the chance to ask some questions, but arrive early, especially for popular authors who draw a big crowd.

Prairie Lights isn’t the only place to spot a writer in Iowa City, which is rich in used and specialized bookstores. Head to The Haunted Bookshop (www.thehauntedbookshop.com), a house built in 1895, and you may spot Jane Smiley, who won a Pulitzer in 1992, or Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight, who is considered one of America’s best short-fiction writers. Both authors are household names in Iowa City.

Prairie LightsThe store carries a wide selection of books, including those that once belonged to local writers. “Sometimes a writer will leave her name in it—like Jane Smiley or Chris Offutt,” owner Nialle Sylvan says. “Sometimes there are signed dedications in it, and I like that. But if it’s not signed, I feel that’s kind of a secret between me and the customer.”

ABOUT A FIVE-MINUTE WALK away is Northside Book Market (www.abebooks.com/home/welsh). Cort Williams, the son of owners Rock and Jan Williams, says the store is “fortunate with the university crowd. You get a whole lot of specialized books.” Northside also gets plenty of internet business for harder-to-find, small-press words. As for who shops there, Cort says, “James Alan McPherson comes in to buy books and movies.”

Another huge collection, also in a charming old house—this one with an affectionate cat—can be found at Murphy-Brookfield Books (www.abebooks.com/home/murphybk), a distinguished store that carries between 3,000 and 4,000 volumes of poetry. The store has many young writers as well as professors who buy and sell. “We get a lot of people from the Writers’ Workshop because we have two rooms of fiction and nine cases of poetry,” co-owner Mark Brookfield says.

In June and July, the city swells with 1,100 writers who come for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival (www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/iswfest). Writers of all ages and abilities attend, and the Young Writer’s Studio caters to high-school age scribes. But if you just want to chat up a writer and ask about the writing life, where should you go? “Iowa City doesn’t really have a writers’ coffee shop,” Sylvan says, “but it does have a bar—Dave’s Fox Head Tavern. There’s also George’s.”

Author Marilynne Robinson
lecturing at the University
of IowaDespite the struggle often associated with writing, Iowa City has a reputation for making things a little easier by giving authors the space to think. And many books acknowledge the city for that. On your way back to the highway, you might agree that this part of Iowa lives up to the state’s slogan, “Fields of Opportunities.” For writers, it’s a place where dreams really do come true.

WRITING IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS

Tour the streets where literary dreams come.

Trot around town and make a literary pilgrimage to the houses where famous writers lived. Visit the apartments at 225 N Linn St and 126 N Clinton St, where playwright Tennessee Williams lived in the late 1930s.

Vonnegut Mansion, an 1885 house at 800 N Van Buren St, was recently restored and is managed by the historic Bostick Guest House.

Flannery O’Connor lived in town in the late 1940s, and went to St. Mary’s Church, at the intersection of Jefferson and Linn. Several of her famous stories were written during her Iowa years, and locals remember her as being very, very quiet.

John Irving used Iowa City as a setting in his books: The house at 918 Iowa Ave in which the protagonist of The Water-Method Man battles to make ends meet is still there.