The University of Iowa Department of Theatre Arts and the UI International Writing Program (IWP) will present Global Express, a free evening of staged readings of works by current participants in the IWP at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 23, in Theatre B of the UI Theatre Building.

Global Express, now in its 12th year, has become an annual event where international writers have an opportunity to see their work be staged, whether it’s a play, short story or a poem.

This year Kuwait, Myanmar, Uruguay, Zimbabwe, Iraq, Pakistan, South Korea, Greece, and Botswana will be represented. The free production is organized and directed by actress/director Saffron Henke with dramaturgy by Maggie Conroy, an alumna of UI Playwrights Workshop.

The 2012 IWP community includes book publishers, recorded musicians, film editors, slam poets, librettists, playwrights, human rights workers, BBC journalists, and art curators. They include a winner of the Arabic Booker Prize, one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists, and one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

The roster of this fall's "United Nations of Writers" includes the representatives from Afghanistan, Argentina, Belarus, Botswana, Brazil, Burma/Myanmar, Chile, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Mauritius, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Taiwan, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.

Founded in 1967, the IWP was the first international writers' residency at a university, and it remains unique in world literature. Since 1967, more than 1,400 writers from more than 140 countries have been in residence at the UI. The IWP is part of the UI Graduate College.

The IWP introduces talented writers to American life; enables them to take part in American university life; and provides them with time, in a setting congenial to their efforts, for the production of literary work.

The U.S. Department of State is a major source of support for the IWP. The residency also includes writers participating on grants from their domestic cultural organizations and foundations.

For accommodations at the event, contact the Department of Theatre Arts at 319-335-2700. The IWP is a unit of the UI Graduate College. The Department of Theatre Arts is a unit of the Division of Performing Arts in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

For a UI arts calendar and details of upcoming events, visit the new Arts Iowa website.