Mary Jo Bang, former visiting faculty at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Eleni Sikelianos will read at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 4, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City as part of the Mission Creek Festival. The reading also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.
Bang holds degrees from Northwestern University, the Polytechnic of Central London, and from Columbia University, the last an Master of Fine Arts. She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. Her work has appeared in New American Writing, Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Denver Quarterly, and Harvard Review. Bang was the poetry co-editor of the Boston Review from 1995 to 2005. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry including Apology for Want, Louise in Love, The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans, The Bride of E, and Elegy, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Bellagio Foundation.
Sikelianos graduated from the Naropa Institute with an Master of Fine Arts. She taught at Teachers & Writers Collaborative in New York City and teaches Literature and Bard College's Clemente Program. She co-ran the Wednesday Night Readings at the St. Mark's Poetry Project in St. Mark's Church. Her work has appeared in Grand Street, Rattapallax, Sulfur, Chicago Review, and Fence. Sikelianos has published six collections of poetry including Body Clock, The California Poem, and The Monster Lives of Boys and Girls, winner of the 2002 National Poetry Series, as well as a memoir, The Book of Jon. She is currently the director of creative writing at the University of Denver.
The Iowa Writers’ Workshop is a graduate program in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all UI-sponsored events. For more information or an accommodation to attend this reading, call Jan Weissmiller at Prairie Lights, 319-337-2681. For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the new Arts Iowa website.