Celebrating the City of Literature, Iowa City, Iowa, September 21, 2016

- I want to acknowledge our university and community supporters. The University of Iowa's International Programs, and the University of Iowa's Honor Programs. They contribute vital time, talent, and logistics to our organization. I also thank the Stanley UI Foundation Support Organization for their financial support. And I thank today's special financial sponsors, Michael Margolin, and Karen and Wallace Chappell. Yay! Our programs are made possible by the financial support of all of these sponsors. Now, it is my great pleasure to introduce our speakers. Anna Barker is an Assistant Professor in Russian and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa. Anna is also involved with the book fair each year, and she will comment on her work with the fair. Anna has taught courses in the English department, in cinema and comparative literature, and in the Slavic and Asian languages department. She is also well-known for her open-air readings of classic works, such as Anna Karenina, War and Peace, and Don Quixote. And apparently this fall, the reading will be Crime and Punishment. And I think you have fliers on the table about that. John Kenyon, is the Executive Director of the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature. Prior to becoming Executive Director, John spent 20 years in journalism, most recently as Editor of the Corridor Business Journal. John is a native of Des Moines, and a graduate of the University of Iowa. So, please join me in welcoming Anna and John. And I think John is gonna be the first speaker. - All right, well as I get all set up, I'd like to thank Karen for that wonderful introduction. Thank all of you for coming out today. Can we hear? I heard a speak up. You can't hear. Now you can? All right. I will talk loudly. So again, my name is John Kenyon, and I'm the Executive Director of the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature Organization. And I wanted to talk about a number of things today. So I'm going to covers lot of territory, and I hope that I can get to everything. If we have questions, obviously, I'd be happy to answer anything at the end, and I can stick around as well after the program. I wanted to talk a little bit about why Iowa City is the City of Literature. What that means for us as a city. What my organization does. And then get into a little bit of detail about this year's book festival, which comes up in two weeks. And then, I'll turn it over to Anna, who will talk about all of the things going on with the live public readings. So, Iowa city is a City of Literature, and as Karen had mentioned, we are one of 20 in the world. We are the only City of Literature in North America. And I'll tell you a little bit about how we got to that place. A lot of times when I start a program, I have to start at the very beginning. We're a UNESCO city of literature, and I usually have to explain what UNESCO means. Now I think for this audience, I probably don't have to go into as much detail. You guys know that UNESCO is United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. And UNESCO is best known for programs like the World Heritage Site Program, that selects sites that are deemed worthy of saving because of their heritage around the world. It's a list of more than 1,000 of those sites. They're known for tsunami early warning systems that are set up around oceans of our globe. It's one of the scientific endeavors they have done. Early in the last decade, UNESCO was looking to recognize cities. So instead of their member countries, or historic sites, they wanted to build a network of cities. And they wanted to recognize creativity. And particularly, creativity as it could apply to sustainable development. And so, while they were talking about that, folks in Edinburgh, Scotland, were kind of doing a survey of their literary assets. They're the home to Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Walter Scott, all the way up through Alexander McCall Smith, and J.K. Rowling today. And they wanted to have an organization like UNESCO find a way to recognize that. At the same time UNESCO was looking to recognize creative cities. And a lot of back and forth ensued, and the result was the formation of the creative cities network. And so, that was formed in 2004. And Edinburgh became the first city in that network. And what UNESCO did, is they created criteria across seven different disciplines. So literature is just one of the areas in which a city can be designated in this Creative Cities network. There's also music, film, gastronomy, crafts and folk art, media arts and design. And so, they have this overarching network with these criteria that they set out. And so, folks in Iowa City, around the time that these criteria were coming up, particularly at the University of Iowa. Were looking at the literary assets that they had. The writer's workshop, the International Writing Program, the translation workshop, the list is very long, as you can imagine. And that's the effort that led to the formation of the brand, the writing university, as you hopefully have heard if they've done their branding correctly. They were looking at all of these assets, and they were looking at the list of criteria for City of Literature, and they realized that there was a lot of overlap. And the story that I like to tell, Chris Merrill, who I'm sure many of you know. He has spoken before this group many times. At the International Writing Program, had contacted some people that he knew at UNESCO. And said what would you think about Iowa City being a City of Literature? And they said well, we've been waiting for your application. So, Chris took that as a pretty good sign. So he kind of spearheaded a group that was made up of folks from the university, the city, the Convention of Visitor's Bureau, the library was involved. And they put together a 75-page dossier that outlines why Iowa City should be a City of Literature. And the criteria that I had on that past slide, I didn't talk about it much, but it's talking about the quantity and quality of educational programs in literature having an environment in which literature, and poetry, and writing, play an integral role, having strong libraries and bookstores, and cultural centers and so on and so forth. And those are all things we have in abundance here. And so this dossier that they put together, is really a very well-written book of sorts, that talks about why Iowa City should be a City of Literature. One side note, as you can see, this piece was printed on paper from the Center for the Book, here at the University of Iowa. It had hand calligraphy cover, it was in a box made by the Center for the book. It's a beautiful document. And shortly after we and some other cities who had gone to this level to earn our designation, had done so, UNESCO changed the rules, and now cities that are applying have to fill out an online form. In part because they didn't want the judges to be swayed by the beauty of some of the things that had been put together. So the cities today have us to thank for that. So we applied, and in 2008, UNESCO agreed that Iowa City is in fact a City of Literature. And so we had that designation conferred on us in November of 2008. At the time, we were the 3rd City of Literature in the world, as I mentioned before. Edinburgh was the first. Melbourne snuck in a couple of months ahead of us to be the 2nd City of Literature, and then many other cities have followed. Now, the network has grown significantly, as I mentioned. So this is a list, and I apologize, its a little small on this screen. There are 20 Cities of Literature, currently in the world. The brochures that are kind of floating around that look like this on the tables, list only 11, because at the time I put this together last year, that's how many there were. UNESCO, as you can see from the dates on the sides there, added nine cities to the network, in December of last year. So we have been dealing with fairly exponential growth. Our overall network grew from 69, to 116 cities, in December of last year. For 47 new cities to join. So, nearly half as many again, cities are in this network. And UNESCO would like to grow it fairly rapidly. So, in terms of where these cities are geographically, you can see on this map, that Europe is very well-represented. The Western hemisphere not so much. We have us and Montevideo in Uruguay, in South America. And we as particularly as Cities of Literature, and this is just the Cities of Literature, not all 116 cities, obviously, but in some ways this map is representative of the overall number of cities. There are very few cities in Africa, very few cities in South America, very few in Asia. And those are all areas that particular we at Cities of Literature, feel we need to try to add, to diversify our network. The value of our network is in the partnerships, and the collaborations, and the cooperation that we can have, with these other areas. And the more diverse our network is, obviously, the better that pool of ideas, and people that we can collaborate with, is. And so, we, when we have relationships with folks in other countries are reaching out, trying to mentor in some ways, to see if we can diversify our network a little bit. So in terms of how we're structured, UNESCO, when they gave us the designation, they pretty well gave us a pat on the head, and said good job, go do good things with this. There was not much in the way of direction for what we would do. Now that has changed over the last few years, particularly in the last couple, as the network has grown in size. Now UNESCO has some marching orders for us, really. And I'll talk a little bit more about that with the next slide. But we decided as a city, to organize with an independent non-profit, to manage the designation as a City of Literature. Some of my colleagues work for governmental entities. My colleague in Melbourne works for the Victoria State Arts Council, and there's a writing center that's he's part of there. The folks in Reykjavik work for the city government. The folks in Dublin work for the Dublin Library, for example. We follow the model that Edinburgh has started with, being an independent non-profit. In part because there are so many potential stakeholders for what we do. There's the city, obviously, who technically owns the designation. But the University of Iowa, without their programs, and all of the things coming out of there, we certainly would not be a City of Literature. As well as North Liberty and Coralville, and the county, and all of these other stakeholders. And so the idea was, that as an Independent non-profit, we could take resources from all of those, we could meet the needs of all of those, and collaborate with all of those stakeholders in a way that we might not be able to if we were part of the city, or part of the university. That is definitely a point of view that has been born out by our successes that we've had so far. So that is how we've been structured. And as I've mentioned, what it means to be a City of Literature has changed somewhat. Again, when we started, essentially we were told, use the designation to do bigger and better things. And then let us know how you've done. But lately, UNESCO is really seeing the Creative Cities Network as an opportunity to push global agendas. And the one that I have on the screen, and again, I apologize, it's kind of difficult to see, but it's at least a lot of pretty colors for you to look at. That is the graphical representation of the 2030 Urban Development Agenda that was approved by the UN in September, and went into force on January one of this year. And what this is, is a set of goals that the UN has said between now and 2030, so over the next 14, 15 years, these are goals that are looking to eradicate poverty, to bring food sustainability to populations, to deal with sustainable development and so on. And UNESCO has asked us as member cities, to find ways that our programming and our endeavors can help UNESCO, and by extension, the UN, to meet some of these goals. Goal number 11 up there, deals with sustainable development in cities, for example. And that's one that they're really pushing the Creative Cities Network, obviously, to help with. So we'll be talking with the city government, and some of our other stakeholders, and looking at ways that our programming, and our influence in the city can help lead the city in those directions. I'm happy to report that a lot of the things in that goal, and different sub goals, are things that we're already doing, or things that we're already pursuing. So, it will just be really a matter of kind of shining a light on some of the things that we're already doing, and looking for ways that we can help to make that even more efficient. So in terms of what we do as a City of Literature here on the ground, I'd like to think of it as three different things. We do a lot of networking, where we're identifying resources in the community, and the literary community, and needs in the community. And finding ways that we can bring those two together. We do a lot of advocacy. Things like this. Letting people know about why we're a City of Literature. What we have here to offer. And it's doing that locally, across the state, across the country, and around the globe. I was just in Sweden last week, for the Creative Cities Network annual conference. And there, not only am I learning from my colleagues, but I'm letting them know about who we are and what we do, and why we have this designation. It's a great opportunity to help spread the word. We also collaborate a lot with those other cities on projects both large and small. For example, as I'll mention in a moment, we have a partnership with the Dublin City of Literature this year, where they are sending over some Irish poets to appear at the book festival in a couple of weeks. We've also sent writing from our poets and writers here in our community to various cities for different programs, where they're projecting them on the sides of buildings, or having different displays to show work from around the world. So the biggest thing that we do. There was the networking, and there was the advocacy. And then there's programming. That's really the biggest thing that we do, and certainly the most visible thing that we do. And so with the rest of my time, I just wanted to go through some of the highlights of our programming schedule. The most recent thing that we just completed, is Music IC. Anybody familiar with this one? Anybody been to Music IC? A few? Good. So Music IC is a festival. It started with folks at Hampshire, and then it moved to the Summer of the Arts, and we took it over this year, and hope to keep it under our umbrella. It's a great festival that celebrates the intersections between chamber music and literature. And so we had this festival in the middle of June this year, with a series of concerts that again, blended written work and chamber music, and we definitely are trying to raise the profile of this event. It's kind of a hidden gem in Iowa City, and I would love for it to just be a gem, and take away the hidden part. So pay attention next June. We do our One Book, Two Book Children's Literature Festival. This is definitely one of our signature events. And what this is, in some ways it's a traditional children's literature festival. We bring in authors that have written and illustrated children's books, to have talks for the kids. We have, as you can see, with the giant Clifford and Curious George up there, we bring in costumed characters for the kids to meet. What we also, more importantly, have a student writing component to this festival. Where we ask kids all throughout the Iowa City, Cedar Rapids Corridor, in grades one through eight, to write a piece of original work. It can be a poem, a story, an essay, a page from a graphic novel. And to submit that. And we find various ways throughout the course of that weekend, to celebrate the best of that work. The most heartening thing has been seeing kids who are recognized year after year. We're helping to reinforce for them, that they have writing talent. That that talent should be recognized. That the community sees value and importance in what they're doing. And to see them continue to pursue that work has been among the most heartening things we've done as an organization. And that's held late each February. We have our Writers on the Fly video interview series. And I'm gonna kinda go fast through a couple of these things. It's a repository of interviews that we have done with writer that live here, or have come here to teach, or have just come to Prairie Lights to read. That's Writersonthefly.org. And it's a tremendous resource that we have. We give out our Paul Engle Prize. Paul Engle of course, long-time Director of the International Writing Program, and the Writer's workshop at the university. We recognize writers who go above and beyond. Who are exemplary writers, but who don't just write books and novels, and non-fiction, but they are using their talents and skills to comment on the issues of the day. To improve their communities. This is the mystery writer, Sara Paretsky, who was recognized last year for her largely unheralded work, advocating on behalf of women, and the disadvantaged through some of her volunteer work, and her advocacy over her long career. And we were very pleased to be able to shine a light on that part of Sara's work. On the other end of the spectrum in terms of experience, we have our Glory of the Senses Essay Contest, where we recognize high shool students for their writing excellence. This is a group of young ladies. We really have a hard time getting the young men writing for our contest. So if you have a young man in your life, encourage them to write. But the top prize for this is a year of free tuition to the University of Iowa. So we have a lot of happy students. That's usually the reaction I get when I say that. We have a lot of happy students, and even happier parents, when I notify them about their student winning this. If you want to be inspired by young people, I would suggest you come out to our awards ceremony this year, which will be October 15th, at the Lucas Dodge Room, in the IMU. Will be at one o'clock. Winning students from all across the state will be there to read their work and receive their scholarships. And it's a very uplifting event. And I can again refresh your memory about that later. And I just love sharing this photo. This is our Hawkeye Readers Program. We work with the Hawkeye football team to put their players into elementary school classrooms in a few select schools in Iowa City. When we started this, it was having the players read to the kids. Just kind of a feel good thing. The teachers flipped that on its head, and have the kids read to the players. And what that does, is these kids really want to impress these players. They look up to them, literally and figuratively. That's about six foot five, 320 pound, Andrew Donnell, who is now in the NFL. He's the one in the middle. And these kids work over the course of six weeks with these players, and their fluency in reading increases tremendously over that time, because they are really working. The kids, Al. They are really working to impress these kids. And I must say, I must stick up for the football players. I know they take a lot of grief some times. These are exemplary young men, who are really helping to do some wonderful things. And then the book festival, which I'm going to spend a couple minutes on before I turn it over to Anna. This year's festival is October 4th through 9th. You have the print program hot off the presses. Came out in the little village just this morning. There are copies all throughout town. Big stacks at the Iowa City Public Library. Flip through this. This is the best way to figure out all of the things that are going on at the festival. But I wanted to hit on a few highlights of the festival, that I thought would be of particular interest to this audience. These are just some of the book covers of some of the big authors that we have coming, and then I'll talk a little bit more in depth about some of the things we have going on here. We start off on Tuesday night, ad then on Wednesday, we have Michelle Hoover, who's a novelist. An Iowan native, who has a new novel, Bottom Land, which is about a German-American family that is dealing with post-World War I animosity from people in rural Iowa. Obviously because of all of the talk about immigration that we've been dealing with in the past few years, this resonates a lot. It shows that it's a problem that we've been grappling with for an awful long time in our country. Andrea Wulf has a book on The Invention of Nature, which is about Alexander von Humboldt, who had gone through and cataloged a lot of the early flora in our world. And it's a fascinating book. And she will be talking at noon on Thursday. All of these things are in the program. So I apologize I'm going quickly, but I wanna make sure that I at least highlight these. Our Paul Engle Prize this year goes to a young woman named Roxane Gay. An African-American writer who is an essayist, a novelist, a short story writer, commentator for The New York Times. She just signed on to become the first female writer of a Marvel comic book. She has done everything. She's amazing. And she is the type of writer that you're going to want to say that you saw her. And you can actually say I saw her when she was in Iowa City to receive the Paul Engle Prize. So join us on Thursday night for that. The Irish poets that I mentioned will be here on Saturday of the festival, which is October 8th. They'll be doing a reading at 11:30, and a panel discussion at 2:30. That one is at the Java House. Alexander Hemon, who is a writer. I don't now if he was at this group a few years ago, but I know he was the center for the, excuse me, The Center for Human Rights, One Community, One Book Selection, a few years back. He's going to be in town, talking about his novel, The Lazarus Project, which is actually from 2008. It was a National Book Award finalist. But the treat is that the photographer, Velibor Bozovic will be with him. And he had taken some photos that Hemon kind of based some of his book on, and then took photos that were based on some of the things that Hemon wrote. It was a very collaborative project, and they have started kind of going around talking about that project. It is very much still resonated with people. And they will be talking about that. Okey Ndibe is a Nigerian writer, who has been in the States since 1988, and has a wonderful new book called, Never Look an American in the Eye, which is a memoir of his time coming from Nigeria to the US, and dealing with his own immigrant story. And I'm about 2/3 of the way through reading it, and it's fascinating. Of course we partner with the International Writing Program, and they hold panel discussions with our writers that we have brought in, and those will be throughout the day on Saturday of the festival, as well as a special one on Friday at noon, on September, or excuse me, October 7th. That one will be at the Iowa City Recreation Center. And the other ones will be at various locations that you can find in the program. And then lastly, Suki Kim, who is the author of the One Community, One Book selection this year. And we have a few bookmarks floating around about that so you can see. She has a book called, Without you there is no us. And it's about her time really undercover, teaching English to the children of elites in North Korea. And so it's the rare book that really kind of pulls back the curtain on that very secretive regime. And having read it, it's a fascinating tale, and I've seen videos of Suki talking, and what she is able to share is really fascinating. So, that is a very whirlwind view of some of the highlights of the festival. And I would like to turn it over to Anna now, who will talk about another one of the highlights. We have been very pleased to work with her over the past few years of the book festival, to have outdoor, free, public readings of books. And this year, she will be leading the charge with Crime and Punishment. And she is going to talk a little bit more for you about that. So, thank you. - Oops. Hello everyone. Since I started doing my public readings, I basically read long books on the public square. I introduce myself as the person who has been causing mayhem since 2010. It happened in a very sweet and goofy way. It was the 100th anniversary of the death of Tolstoy. And I teach a class at the University of Iowa called Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. And I started asking my colleagues, are we doing something to commemorate this great event? And one of my colleagues, Russell Valentino suggested, well why don't you read Anna Karenina out loud? And I said fine, I'll do it. So that was all the encouragement I needed. We did it in the downtown area, on the pad mall by the fountain, and we did it during a football weekend. It was a very interesting connection, reading the last 200 pages of Anna Karenina, with all the Hawkeye fans converging on the downtown. Sadly, I have only one image from that event. That's me, taking a picture of Emily Larson. And this kind of blossomed, and mushroomed into something that is continuing on to this day. And I have to tell you that Emily is still working on her Tolstoy. Emily and I are going to a conference in San Francisco, where we are going to give papers on Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata. This is one of the posters that I used for the event. And it was a poster for the public reading. And I organized several events that worked will within the context of reading a very long novel out loud. We had a staged reading of the Cherry Orchard also organized at the same time. Because I realized that not only was it the 100th anniversary of Tolstoy's death, that year was also the 150th anniversary of the birth of Chekhov, and the 50th anniversary of The Russian Program. So this really became the template for many of the events that happened in the subsequent years. In 2010, 2011, we read Peter Pan. And it's such an odd choice after Anna Karenina, and it happened because my daughter was six at the time when we were reading Anna Karenina. And she couldn't fathom why she couldn't gain access to her mother for three days. And explaining to her that mother is reading a book on a street corner was just not good enough. So she said, could you do something fun next year? This was... This was done because of a public request. And this is the first time, actually, that I collaborated with the book festival. Because the book festival found out about the reading of Anna Karenina, and they just felt in a place like Iowa City, we should read books out loud, together. To say that it was a really fun reading is an understatement. It was a very child-friendly event. So the book festival at that point, was in the summer, in 100 degree heat, and 90% humidity, right by the university library. Now we know why they moved the book festival to the fall, thank you. But kids just came, and readers came. And kids sat on the lawn, and they listened to the book. Here's Katherine Moyers, who has been a reader ever since. I think she read in every single reading since 2011. Members of the community came to read. Every once in awhile we had to run into the library, because it would start raining. There's a wonderful bear dressed as Tinkerbell. It was sort of all hands on deck. I have my husband, and all of my children reading at this event. So it was an event for the young, and for the young at heart. I kid you not, this young lady read for 20 minutes without dropping her hula hoop. It was just tremendously fun. Friends just showed up and read to each other. Here's another set of friends. They read to each other and moved on. This is a very charming couple. It was a mother-daughter duo, and they came and read to each other. And then Margaret Chula showed up, and she basically took care of my family for the rest of the reading. Here are all of my children listening to Margaret. She is wonderful. And she has been a reader since, she actually was a reader in 2010. So we've had Margaret with us since the way, way, the beginning. Just when I finished reading Anna Karenina, I actually called the Director of UNESCO City of Literature, Jeanette, that was before John's time, and I told her, Jeanette, I have a great idea for 2012, let's do War and Peace out loud. And she said to me, Anna go home and sleep. Obviously I didn't go home and sleep. I started making preparation. And so, this was such an enormous project, that I really wanted to understand what I was doing. And in order to understand that book, I did quite a bit of traveling. The preparations started about two years before the 2012 project. So I started thinking about it very early on. I visited Corsica. And this is a statue of Napoleon in Ajaccio. So is this one. I visited Paris, because I needed to see the tomb of this man, that is destroyed in course of 1,300 pages by Tolstoy. It's interesting to what extent that project became a project of exploration of Iowa history. Because this is a street sign in Paris, and of course there's Marengo, Iowa, that is named for a battle that Napoleon won during his first Italian campaign. And I had to go to see where the book was written. So the book War and Peace was written actually, on the first floor of this building. And this is Tolstoy's house in Yasnaya Polyana. To say that it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited, is a vast understatement. I've been there four times since. I just can't let go of the gorgeousness of this place. And I'm just going to show you. I have to indulge you. I'll show you a few images from the Tolstoy estate, because this is the place where Tolstoy roamed, this is the place where Tolstoy wrote, and this is the place where Tolstoy is buried. So I showed you the tomb of Napoleon. Can you spot the tomb of Tolstoy here? It's right there. This is it. It's a tiny, little mount. Compared, the tomb of Tolstoy was the tomb of Napoleon. Quite a contrast. And of course I had to visit the battlefield, because so much of War and Peace deals with the battle of Borodino. So here's a sign for Borodino. And it was a life-altering experience. This is actually the same battlefield where the battle was fought with Nazi Germany in 1941. So the history there is tremendous. I roamed the fields, I took notes. I reminded myself of one of the characters in War and Peace, because Pierre roams the field during the battle, and he's completely clueless as to what's going on. And I felt the same way. There are so many monuments on this battlefield. It is an overwhelming, emotional experience to be there. And so, there's a sword at the Monument to Katuza, that says 1812 on it, why we were doing it in 2012, it was the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. And look at the old Capitol. Sean O'Harrow, the Director of the art museum, was so excited about this project, that he not only put the Iowa flag on the old Capitol, he puts Napoleon's Imperial banner with the eagle on it, and NApoleon's regimental banner, that looks an awful lot like the flag of Iowa. Because the flag of Iowa does look like the French flag. So there is Napoleons Imperial banner, there's Napoleon's regimental banner, there's the Iowa flag. And some of you may know this, but this is the most delightful bit of information that I'm going to reveal to you. The original name of Iowa City was Napoleon, Iowa. And the original settlement was on the corner of Gilbert Street and Napoleon Lane. And so when I see these t-shirts saying, Iowa City, Iowa, University of Iowa, all of our creativity went into our name. Trust me, it was more exciting way back when. So there's Napoleon Lane. And where the baseball diamonds are, is where the settlement used to be. So, Sean was happy, happy. He came to read, he was our first reader. The book begins in French, and Sean is a French speaker, so Sean O'Harrow was our first reader. Katherine Moyers, again, oh my gosh, she reads every time. She signs up early, and reads often. There is Sean talking to John Kenyon, and there's me talking to John Kenyon. So John and I have been on speaking terms since 2012. The funny thing about that photo is, I have very wet hair, because I always arrive completely breathless. And you have to understand that I had to brace for four days of reading. It's a book that took us 54 hours to read out loud. So from now on, I'm going to show you about 60 images, to just give you an idea of what it means to stand in front of the Old Capitol, or inside the Supreme Court, or actually the... The Senate, not the Senate chamber, but the Supreme Court room of the old Capitol in inclement weather, to finish reading a book of that magnitude out loud. It's really fun at the beginning. People show up. The press is there. Sean stays and listens. In-laws come. They get the only seats available. Everyone is just having a great time. And then the reading begins. And sometimes you read completely alone, sometimes you read to a group of people, then you go inside. Here's actually the founder of Music IC, Judy. Mrs. Selick. Katherine Moyers comes again. And so it goes on. Then I go for a walk, and I find people reading War and Peace in absolutely beautiful locations. Then I find War and Peace posters at Banditos. And at Taste of China. And the reading continues into the night. People bring props. That's a Tolstoy finger puppet. We read into the night. Then I walk home, or walk to my car to drive home. I look at the Prairie Lights windows, and this is what they look like. The next day it's raining. We do it rain or shine. From nine AM to nine PM every day. Some people get very agitated, and very excited, and we continue. And it goes on, and on, and on, and on. Then it's nighttime again. And then these college kids show up who get so into it, they absolutely love doing this. This is Matt. That's what we do. We are the City of Literature. And I'm just going to continue showing images to you. This is actually a married couple. I'm still in touch with them. They came to read together. It was a date. And then of course, all children need to participate, so here is my second son, here is my first son. They get me to act very silly. It's nine PM, the second day of the reading. We're halfway through. And so it continues. I just had to show you all of these images. To just help you realize. Here's another family. Son, dad, mom. Husbands. I read every one in awhile. I'm realizing at this point, that I've been wearing the same clothes for three days. Some students show up during the day, they come back, this is the same student, Paul, who comes back to read at night. And this is the last night of the reading. The sense of euphoria we had was absolutely overwhelming. It is cold. My husband has to bring blankets for all of the students. They start counting down the pages. This is a 1,300 page book. We are on page 64. They keep putting a new sign on the enormous poster for every page, from about page 70. And so, this is what the Old Capitol looks like. It's 1:30 in the morning, we're almost done. Everyone is wearing a blanket. Take a look at that trash can. I fed them pizza and cupcakes non-stop since nine PM. And lots and lots of coffee. And look at their faces. That's why I do it. They were just absolutely joyous. This is 1:30 in the morning, on the fourth day of the reading. Done. Here's the poster. And Napoleon, of course, on the poster. And the number of related events was huge for that. We had a wonderful commemorative reading with members of the community, such as the Crescendo Children's Choir, singing wonderful Russian music. Rachel Joselson sang the Romances of Tchaikovsky. And then we have Carol McVeigh, and Katherine Moyers, and John, reading passages from War and Peace, and there was also a World Canvas event, with Joan Care. And there were several partners, because the University Symphony played, of course, Tchaikovsky's 1812, and the University put together an amazing art exhibit. It was called Napoleon and the Art of Propaganda. Some of the pieces from the exhibit at IMU, some of the pieces were in the Old Capitol. And then, the art museum had a party. And we had a throne, we had mantles, we had really fun party invitations. And the only reason why Sean O'Harrow was so excited about this project, was he got to look like Napoleon. So here's Sean and Amber. 2013 was Fathers and Sons. We scaled down. 2012 was a huge event. Once again, I prepared by going to see Tugenev's estate, in Spasskoye, in Russia. It's absolutely beautiful place. I also visited the house where he died in Paris. It's in Bougival. Here's his study, there's the balcony, and once again, we're back on the same location with a new poster, and that was a one-day reading. So once again, this gives you a chance, so what happens, oh I love this image. This kid kept pacing back and forth, all through the reading. I can tell you volumes about all of these readers, and they're all absolutely wonderful. Some of them come year after year. You are recognizing some familiar faces, I know. And so the reading, I love this set of images, because you can see how the sun is setting over McBride Hall, as I'm forwarding. And this is the end of the reading. These were some disappointed kids, because they heard about the glory of the four-day reading the year before. Fathers and Sons is short. We were done in four hours. No, not four. Eight hours. And they just felt like we should read it again, because it's not enough. So Fathers and Sons had not so many related events. We did a wonderful talk about Turgenev's influence on Hemingway, during the book festival, and once again, there was an event at the Senate Chamber that was dedicated to Turgenev and his friends, such as Pauline Viardot, and Chopin. So those are the sites. Then for the 2014 reading, Notes from Underground. We decided to go into Dublin underground. And that was so much fun. So here's Dublin Underground. And we actually went underground. And the students had so much fun reading down there. Also, it was on a bitterly cold, rainy day, so being inside was very, very cozy. So here once again, some of these students, you see the same faces. Students come and do it over and over again. The President showed up. Katherine Moyers showed up. My friend, Jean. We have wonderful listeners. And that was the only event on that year. It took us only four hours to read the whole book. It was quite short. Because what we were getting for was Don Quixote. So it was the 400th anniversary last year. Once again, it was a part of the book festival. I just had to see those windmills for myself. And the best photos you have seen were all taken by John Moyers, except for these ones. You can't take a bad photo in La Mancha. It is gorgeous. So these were all of mine, and I'm surprised by my ability to do so well. Of course I visited the monument to Cervantes in Madrid. I visited, I would love to visit, but this is the convent where he is buried. And so this was our wonderful poster for that reading. And we did have a birthday party in the Old Capitol. Not for a writer, but for a character. We all sang happy birthday, Don Quixote. And we had a cake that had the image actually, on the cake. Thank you, New Pioneers. They can do anything. And we blew out the candles. Several events dedicated to Quixote, and related to the event. The Old Capitol had a wonderful exhibit from the special collections of the library, of illustrations of Quixote. The Oberman Center did a whole symposium on Don Quixote, and our partners for that were Anna Rodriguez and Denise Filios. It was an absolutely amazing event. World Canvas was dedicated to four centuries of Quixote in our lives. And then that is Kathleen Edwards, and she was the curator of an art museum exhibit. The university symphony did a fabulous all Quixote concert, and it was absolutely marvelous. We even got Terry Gilliam to come to Iowa City. And you can see, there's Herky right above him on the map of Iowa, so he was in Iowa. Why Terry Gilliam? Why Monty Python? 'Cause there's the young Terry Gilliam. He has been trying all his life to make an adaptation of Quixote. And so my point about all of this, is it mad to try to make an adaptation of Quixote all your life? Absolutely. Is it mad to put on a book festival every year? Absolutely. It is mad to read long books on street corners every year? Absolutely. But, here we are, at it again. Yet another year. And there are the steps of the Old Capitol. Vanessa had so much fun. She was laughing out loud. I took probably 50 pictures of just her laughing. Sometimes we have listeners, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we read inside. There's Katherine Moyers again. And there's my daughter again, who now, got used to the fact that she loses her mother for a few days every fall. And now she comes to read. Her friends come to read, after their ballet classes. My ballerina friends come to read, while my daughter brings me dinner. And then guests who showed up to read with us. It was Herky himself. You can't get that kind of publicity. Unless you're doing something absolutely awesome on campus. So, I've been doing this since 2010. I have plans for 2019. I have plans for 2021. I will continue doing this. Why do it? I always choose a book that in the popular cultural view, is too long, too old, and too boring. And we make it short enough to read over a course of a few days, really, really exciting, and relevant to our lives. And so, Crime and Punishment this year. The book is celebrating its 100th birthday. You have some of these posters on your table. The first additional event is tonight. The public library is screening the 1935 version of Crime and Punishment. It's with Peter Lorre, so it's absolutely wonderful. Next Monday, we'll be competing with Maller. I'm sorry, but we'll be showing the Woody Allen film, Matchpoint, which is based on Crime and Punishment. And it's with Scarlett Johansson. I'm going to have a presentation with Christopher Merrill during the book festival about the relevance of Dostoevsky today. And that is in the book festival program. And then we will have a wonderful concert, once again the Old Capitol, where we will be collaborating with the Saint Raphael Orthodox Church Choir, and will be reading passages of Crime and Punishment. And please join us for many and all of these events. Thank you. - Okay, here's one that's fairly easy to answer. Any chance of C-SPAN covering some, or all, of the book festival, and the readings? - We ask them every year. And we've had a little bit of interest from them. One of the challenges is that C-SPAN only talks about non-fiction books, and because we're in Iowa City, and home to the Writer's Workshop, we have a really strong focus on fiction in our book festival. And really, they want to also catch people when they're at the very beginnings of their tours, and unfortunately though, we get an awful lot of amazing authors at the book festival, they're usually on one of the coasts before they get here to the middle of the country, and it's easier for C-SPAN to pick them up in Boston, or New York, or Philadelphia, or places like that. That doesn't mean that we won't keep trying. And they definitely are aware of us, and we are in conversation with them all the time. So keep your fingers crossed. - Okay, Anna, someone would like to know more about what your future plans are for reading novels aloud? - Wonderful. So John knows this little quirk of mine. I deal only with dead authors. They're just a lot easier to handle. So, kudos to John. He works with creative types who are still around. The students who are studying with me today, heard about the glory days of us reading War and Peace out loud in 2012, and they explained to me that I have to do it again for them, while they are at the University of Iowa. Well luckily for me, all of the great Russian novels will be celebrating their 150th anniversary in the next 15 years. So I'm all set. War and Peace is going to be 150. The entirety of the book, in 2019. And I'm already starting the preparations for that, and I haven't even read Crime and Punishment yet. And then of course, 2021 is going to be the 200th anniversary since the birth of Dostoevsky. And Brothers Karamazov is his final novel. So we will do that. And let me just indulge you with just a couple of images from places with such readings are done around the world. So, here is one of the images from St. Petersburg. They do a Dostoevsky celebration every June, at the beginning of June, because Crime and Punishment starts with on a hot day, I'm sorry, July. On a hot day in July. So in July they have street celebrations in the neighborhood where Crime and Punishment takes place. And I walked in that neighborhood this summer. It is quite amazing. Then also, Ulysses in Dublin, Bloomsday. Here's actually an actor dressed as James Joyce. They raided the Martello Tower. Here's a reader who is reading there now. And they read downtown in Dublin. I visited the Bloomsday celebration, and it's just so much fun. And then of course, Moby Dick, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. They read the entirety of Moby Dick every year. The first weekend in January. That is actually a short book. You can finish that in about 26 hours. So... You heard it from Anna Barker. So there's precedent for reading these books. All of these readings happen in the locations that are significant in the history of those books. What you can do in a place like Iowa City, a City of Literature, is we can lift all of these books out of their cultural context, and celebrate these books regardless of the time period, or the location where they were written. And that what makes living in Iowa City so much fun. Thank you. - Okay, here's a question for you, John. How can UNESCO ignore Monga? - All right, a very specific criticism. For those who don't know, Monga is the form of Japanese animation and illustration, and comic, graphic novel-type books. I don't know that you could say that we've ignored it, anymore than we ignore a lot of the things that we can't get to in the course of a book festival. I assume that's what the criticism is, that it's not on the festival program. Every year we have about 200 authors that are in our hopper, in terms of being able to come to the festival. And it whittles down to about the 35 to 40 that we're able to invite each year. A lot of that is predicated on who's available, who's able to come at that specific time, who fits in with the other things that we're doing on the program? We certainly do try to have a diverse program, but there are a lot of things that we aren't able to get to, given the size and scope of the festival. If there are folks, whoever had put that question together, if you have specific ideas about things that you think we should have on the festival, or if other people do as well, feel free to share those with us. I can't guarantee that we will be able to get those on to the festival, but bringing those to our attention certainly helps us to be able to consider them. Thanks. - This is probably a question for the city of the Chamber of Commerce. But someone wants to know, with millions of cars going by Iowa City daily, why is there nothing about the City of Literature that directly interests travelers to come to Iowa City? - Another thing that we have tried to work on. So, if you have signs along Interstate 80 you either pay for a billboard, or you try to get some sort of a sign, like the green signs, or the blue signs that have various points of interest. We talk all the time with our local elected officials, and with the CVB about trying to get some recognition for the City of Literature status on there. The DOT very tightly controls what types of signs that you can put along Interstate 80. So the city can't just decide to put up a sign that says, we're a City of Literature. There are a lot of regulatory hoops to go through to do those sorts of things. But again, it's one of those things that we continue to work on. In terms of having the money to buy a billboard, we have chosen with the limited funds we raise, to do programming at this point. If at such time we have enough money that we feel like we've got the programming in hand, and we could buy a billboard, we would certainly look at that. If anybody in the room owns a billboard, that would like to contribute that, we'd be happy to talk with you. - All right, this will be the last question. And this is for you, Anna. Please say something about the ways in which your personal experiences of the sites that you visit, actually impact the public readings, and if they do. - Oh my goodness, yes. I started teaching Tolstoy and Dostoevsky I think in 2007, or 2008. And I thought I knew how to teach War and Peace. Until 2012, when I actually visited all the sites, many of the sites that are mentioned in the novel. And it was an overwhelming experience. You just become completely awed by the scope of what these authors tried to accomplish. War and Peace you can tell is just kind of a book that is close to my heart. And just seeing the location of when it was written, doing so much research on how Tolstoy wrote it, going to the battlefield, finding out how much research Tolstoy has done on the battlefield. I mean, the maps of the battlefield were adjusted after Tolstoy did his research. You realize that these books are with us today, not just because of the time period that produced them. They are with us today, because they address such massive questions that just will not let go. And you really start understanding from the specific, to the universal, some of the issues that these writers touched on. So for me personally, it becomes a journey of self-discovery, and discovery of the book. But also, my students benefit so tremendously from knowing more of the background information that produces these masterpieces. And without that, I feel like I would not be delivering the kind of lectures that I do deliver. And I will not be exciting my students as much as I do. What happens after these classes, my students go to those locations, and also visit these sites. Several of the students who read War and Peace with me, have visited Yasnaya Polyana since, and as I was getting ready for the Crime and Punishment celebration, a former student was texting me images nonstop, from all of the locations she was visiting in St. Petersburg. And so we have these texting battles of her sending me the images that she was seeing on that day, and me texting her the images that I took in August, when I was visiting the same sites. So, it really initiates a dialogue, and it helps students realize that this is so much more than just reading a book. And it encourages them to go and explore on their own, and find things out for themselves. Thank you. - This concludes our program, and on behalf of the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, please thank Anna and John one more time. I also would like to thank our sponsors again. The University of Iowa's International Programs, the University of Iowa's Honors Program, and the Stanley UI Foundation Support Organization. As well as Karen and Wally Chappell, and Mike Margoland. So before we leave, Anna and John, I want to give you a small token of our appreciation. And this is the very coveted Iowa City Foreign Relations Council mugs. One to each of you. - Thank you. - Thank you very much. - So thank you very much for joining us. We're adjourned.