Iowa City University
They have come from all over the world. They will be in Iowa City for a few months, a few years, a lifetime. They are enrolled in the Writers' Workshop, in the Master's Degree in Writing in Spanish, they were selected to be part of the International Writing Program, they are at home writing without anyone knowing, they sit in cafeterias with their computers on and a Open Word (some, more sophisticated, use other writing programs), they go to the bathroom to write something down so as not to forget it, they think verses in front of the river, they are five years old and are in school workshops, they publish rhymes in the local magazine, they are waiters of the clubs of the city, they are waiters of the expensive restaurants of the city, they go to bed early, bars close (at two in the morning), socialize, isolate themselves, write or want to write, have scholarships, wealthy parents, or university teaching contracts.
Even Kurt Vonnegut he recognized it: he thought of the state of Iowa and three things came to mind: corn, pigs… and writers. the author of slaughterhouse five wrote these words in memory of Paul Engle, an intrepid Iowan who in 1937 had taken the reins of America's first and most famous creative writing program, the Writers' Workshop , and later founded the International Writers Program literary residency. Vonnegut's irony was a nobody is a prophet in their own land thrown very gracefully and rather badly in the face of Iowans. Paul Engle, Vonnegut continued, deserved a posthumous Sea Guard medal for all the lives he had saved, including his own by hiring him as teacher at Workshop between 1965 and 1967.
A Spanish writer who is on her way to it tells us
The Writers' Workshop still alive and kicking today. Fifty writers, especially from the United States, but not only, enter the Dey House , a very cozy little house where they share their texts with other writers to workshop them while having coffee. The Workshop has been attended by such famous students as Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams or Paul Harding . Those selected have two years (some even three) to dedicate themselves to writing with a fixed salary in exchange for teaching literature and rhetoric to younger students. For five years, also at the University of Iowa, the Master of Writing in Spanish , much more modest and limited in resources, makes its way. The program, where are today teachers Luis Muñoz, Horacio Castellanos or Ana Merino , gives a literary opportunity to another group of writers. The building where those who write in Spanish have their workshops is a Soviet-style cement block, dark and devoid of coffee. The rough against the sophisticated, the night against the clarity, perhaps it is a metaphor for the types of literature that are written in both worlds.
Dey House
If Iowa City is a city of writers (more so, a **city of literature** declared by **UNESCO** in 2008), it is no wonder that one of the most emblematic bookstores in the United States is here: in There are almost daily readings on Prairie Lights (Marilynne Robinson, whose work is inspired by Iowa, is a regular guest). In its cafeteria it is common to see writers working: tea with pastries (brought from Deluxe, the best pastry in the city) helps to calm the anxiety of the blank Word.
It's rarer, though not entirely uncommon, to find writers at Iowa City's wonderful public library. Two infinite, diaphanous floors, full of comfortable places to read the latest from Miranda July and the first from Virgilio . Modern and recently renovated, the building is the daytime home of many homeless people who educate themselves by reading Schopenhauer while watching the snow fall in winter at minus fifteen degrees.
The most interesting bookstore in the city
Al Foxhead, pretentiously called "the writers' bar" Few people go during the week and you hear people speaking, above all, Spanish. On weekends, however, poets and novelists Americans disengage their hips to the rhythm of old music. 'Girls just wanna have fun' it is the most disheveled thing that can be programmed in the jukebox. There is a pool table where many would like there to be a dance floor, but the regular patrons, true carom professionals, show their contempt for the false glamor of literature and they don't give an inch or a tack against those who get too close.
There are other young writers, and not so young, who stay at the bar next door, **George's**, which has a more modern jukebox, with internet, and cheap burgers good for assimilating the whiskey . Some writers, tired of talking about their novels, choose to move away from the center a bit and look for bars where only locals go. They are hidden and dark. If they are discovered, they do not share the find with anyone. They are a lair. Of course, if a visitor comes, there is no doubt: you cannot leave Iowa City without having a drink at the Foxhead , the place where Kurt Vonnegut They say he punched a student named John Updike, where they got drunk. Raymond Carver, John Cheever and T.C. Boyle, where Pulitzer Prizes have been held. Where some writers who live to be (at least for a few years) they spend their salary on cheap beer and carve their names on the wooden tables.
The most 'modern' jukebox in Iowa City nights
Lena Dunham also tried it in Iowa...
* Alba Lara Granero is a writer from La Mancha who, at the age of twenty-seven, received a scholarship for a creative writing program in Iowa City ("How do you say no to that?"). She tells us about her experience from the city "with a sacred halo left by writers such as Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Flannery O'Connor or Marilynne Robinson (who works as a teacher in the city).
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