The Blog

The winners of our veterans' writing contest!

TIR staff

We're delighted to announce the winners and runners-up of our second Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans writing contest. This year's contest was judged by Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead and former U.S. Marine. The winning and runner-up manuscripts will appear in our Spring 2015 issue. Congratulations to the winners and runners-up, and thanks to all who entered!

First Place

Katherine Schifani, "Pistol Whip" (nonfiction)

Katherine Schifani

Learning to Love the Chicago Manual and the Portable Scanner

Leslie Caton

When I started my internship at The Iowa Review this summer, I was nervous. I'd been peeking in the door every time I walked by, wondering what made TIR tick. I have been a fan of the magazine for years, moved and inspired and occasionally intimidated by the level of literature between the covers.

As a teenager, I'd cope with nerves by visualizing every possible outcome of a new situation and preparing myself. No matter how much time I spent, though, reality was never what I imagined. I'm glad I don't spend much time imagining scenarios these days because I couldn't have guessed this one, either.

What I found in the offices of The Iowa Review was an unassuming group of brilliant people who have forgotten that what they do every day is extraordinary.

Morani Kornberg-Weiss's DEAR DARWISH

Kristina Marie Darling

In her finely crafted debut collection, Dear Darwish, Morani Kornberg-Weiss offers readers a graceful synthesis of domestic imagery and political life. By challenging the boundaries between public and private spaces, and between public and private types of address, the poems in this deftly rendered first book show us that a morning cup of coffee, a dish, and a darkened room can serve as a point of entry to questions that are global in scope. Presented as a series of letters to the iconic Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Kornberg-Weiss's poems suggest that the traditionally feminine realm of the home remains at the very center of much larger political and ethical conflicts, presenting us with a perfect matching of form and content all the while.

Human Rights Index #40: Worker Abuse

TIR staff

The Human Rights Index is prepared three times a year by the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights. The Iowa Review is proud to feature the Index on its web site, to suggest the global political and socioeconomic context within which we read and write.

Human Rights Index #40

Prepared by The University of Iowa Center for Human Rights (UICHR)*

War, Peace, Love, Fear: Stories from Israel—David Ehrlich's WHO WILL DIE LAST

Aviya Kushner

For the sixty-six years of its existence, Israel has been a hotbed of political strife and economic struggle, and the subject of passionate discussion about what the country should and should not be. The difference between the grand dream of Israel and the often problematic contemporary reality is a main subject of Who Will Die Last, a collection of short stories by David Ehrlich, who owns a popular bookstore café in Jerusalem called T’mol Shilshom.