The Blog

Julie Marie Wade's WISHBONE, Sarah Manguso's THE GUARDIANS, and Maggie Nelson's THE ARGONAUTS

Kristina Marie Darling

From the very beginning, readers are conditioned to focus on the words that appear on the page, their semantic meaning and the larger architecture of plot and theme to which they give rise. It is not often that writers ask us to look away from the text proper, to consider what is possible within the margins of a literary work, or even within the small spaces between the words themselves. Yet three recent books of lyric nonfiction envision this negative space as an opportunity to leave some things unsaid within the work, suggesting possibilities more powerfully than exposition ever could.

Rebecca Schiff's THE BED MOVED

Kelli Ebensberger

In her debut collection The Bed Moved, Rebecca Schiff emerges with the biting tongue, warm affection, and well-advised hindsight of a rom-com best friend—in the best possible way. Some of these stories found original publication in places like n+1 and Guernica as early as 2006, and ten years later this collection unleashes its pent-up, raw energy like a box of suburban secrets finally being unveiled. Through familial tensions at a Jewish funeral, “trauma groupies” for bloggers with cancer, and sexual opportunism in motor homes and nudist hot springs, Schiff’s prose coaxes us into the world of wandering Millennials.

Lilah Hegnauer’s PANTRY

Carrie Chappell

Few words bewitch the senses quite like those that recall the world of food. And even fewer ignite the prosaic ear in worlds of poetry. Yet, Lilah Hegnauer did not choose to call her second collection “Snickers bar,” “bell pepper,” or even “cellar door.” Pantry—winner of the 2013 New Southern Voices Book Prize selected by D.A. Powell—arrives in humble felicity. Here, among the canned, jarred, and bagged, is where Hegnauer unleashes her unusual, mystic domestic.

Graham Foust's TO ANACREON IN HEAVEN AND OTHER POEMS

Ted Mathys

There is a well-worn creative writing cliché that a writer must “find” her voice. The Internet drips with advice for the aspiring writer looking to do this, some of it reading like self-help lit for those trying to professionalize. In a blog post titled “Find Your Poetic Voice” on the Writer’s Digest website, for example, Laurie Zupan writes: "I realized that what I didn’t have was a clear, working definition of poetic voice. So I set out to find one—with the goal of honing my voice and the hope that...I’d land myself in a graduate program." Books on poetic craft also traffic in this language. W.W.

2016–17 Internships at The Iowa Review

TIR staff

The Iowa Review (TIR) seeks three UI undergraduate interns for the academic year 2016–17 (one intern with an interest in fiction, one with an interest in poetry, and one with an interest in creative nonfiction) as part of a partnership with the Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates (ICRU). Please note that we are currently not offering a summer internship.

Qualifications

Candidates must be University of Iowa undergraduates, have a UI GPA of 3.33 or above, be entering their junior or senior year, and be English majors. They should be able to work independently and should have a strong interest in literary writing, editing, and publishing.

Duties

Interns will work 5-10 hours a week from August 22, 2016, through May 12, 2017 (University breaks not included), and receive a scholarship of $2,000 ($1,000 per semester).