Events Calendar

The IWP and UI MFA writing programs take over the 2nd floor of Prairie Lights – grab a glass of wine or a fancy soda and settle in for an hour of highlights from three of the writers' best works!

Gabriela ROMÁN (poetry, fiction, translation, drama; Mexico) is a playwright, stage director, and actor, whose plays have been staged throughout Mexico. In 2018, Román won the Theater Exhibition of Morelos State and was a finalist for the National Young Drama Prize for her play Iridescentes; Cósmica was a finalist for the 2015 ASSITEJ-Spain Theatre for Young Audiences International Prize. Her work has been translated into English and Portuguese, and anthologized. Román participates courtesy of the William B. Quarton Foundation.

Tade IPADEOLA (poetry, translation, prose; Nigeria) received the 2013 Nigeria Prize for Literature for his poetry collection The Sahara Testaments, which has been translated into four languages; in 2009 he won the Delphic Laurel for his poem “Songbird.” A Bellagio Rockefeller Fellow and a juror for the Nigeria Prize for Literature, he also translates poetry into Yoruba. He participates thanks to a grant from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

Izzy Casey’s writing has been published in, or is forthcoming from, Gulf Coast, BOAAT, Bennington Review,  Corriere della sera, New York Tyrant, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is an editor for the University of Iowa Prison Writing Project.