Iowa City, Iowa
The tables and cabinets have been pushed to the facet upstairs at Prairie Lights Books. On rows of plastic seats, an viewers of primarily younger individuals waits expectantly as “Lucky” by Britney Spears pumps out of the PA. The track ends and, after noting that it’s the primary time within the retailer that an writer has been launched by a DJ, the emcee invitations Candice Wuehle up to the mic.
Wuehle reads from her newest novel, “Ultranatural,” a darkish story of a Britney-esque pop star’s rise and fall. The author holds consideration with descriptions of the “nerves and teen sweat” of expertise auditions — narrating an early chapter that presages her character’s suffocating descent into the glistening bowels of present enterprise.
Then, after a quick dialogue with one other writer, Camila Urioste, come the questions. And that’s when the magic of this place actually turns into obvious.
While Prairie Lights might be any impartial bookstore up and down the nation — albeit greater, higher stocked and extra internationally famend than most — the viewers notably units it aside. Many of them, as their questions reveal, are aspiring writers, keen to dig into the mechanics of Wuehle’s craft and be taught from somebody two novels into her profession.
These aspirations aren’t confined to this mini-auditorium wedged between memoirs and cookbooks. They’re all over the place in Iowa City, a vacation spot that has turn out to be the engine room of literary America, pulsing out authors on an almost industrial scale. And whereas there are many causes to go to this laid-back Midwestern city, it’s inconceivable to ignore the tales to be discovered round each avenue nook right here .
“Pretty much everyone in this town is working on a book of some sort or other, and you can feel it,” says Nialle Sylvan, proprietor of the Haunted Bookshop, a warren of second-hand volumes north of downtown (there’s no ghost, regardless of the title, simply a ginger cat known as Escalus). “You can feel the way people get excited about books here. I know at least one taxi driver who always has ink-stained fingers.”
The chief purpose for Iowa City’s bookish demeanor celebrates its ninetieth anniversary this 12 months; in 1936, the city’s University of Iowa arrange the primary inventive writing diploma within the United States, after many years of nurturing inventive writing expertise as a part of wider educational applications.
Today, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop is globally well-known, with a roster of former school and alumni that reads like a who’s who of recent American letters — Kurt Vonnegut, Curtis Sittenfeld, Philip Roth, Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, to title a few. The Pulitzers and National Book Awards for alumni proceed to stack up and in 2008, the city was named America’s first UNESCO City of Literature.
Iowa City, IC for brief, may appear an unlikely place to discover such a crucible of creativity. Located removed from the guts of the publishing trade and surrounded by agricultural land, a few of it farmed by conventional Amish communities, IC’s liberal vibe is a regional oddity. Even Cedar Rapids, a greater metropolis simply 30 miles north, feels very completely different.
The college is a key issue. Before Des Moines turned state capital in 1857, IC was the epicenter of Iowa, a standing that earned it an imposing domed capitol building and the college, which at this time has a popularity as one in all America’s outstanding academic establishments, recognized for its regulation and medical schools, in addition to its arts and literature applications — not to point out its Hawkeyes athletics groups.
For many of the 12 months, college students fill town. Sometimes even the central purchasing and nightlife district, a grid of strolling streets often known as the Ped Mall, can really feel like an prolonged campus. With the scholars come the concepts and appetites that form faculty cities all over the place, exerting a gravitational pull into the broader world.
Jordan Sellergen remembers being drawn right here from Cedar Rapids to “hang out when we were kids, to smoke and buy hippy clothes” and watch gigs at Gabe’s, a still-thriving rock venue whose stage as soon as hosted Nirvana simply earlier than they blew up. These days she runs Little Village, a month-to-month information, arts and tradition journal that distills Iowa City’s easygoing spirit into print and distributes it far afield.
“There is this vibrant community here that punches up,” she says. “The way we present ourselves can seem conservative in a way — there is something about the small-town culture, we’re very polite — but we’re also very progressive.”
The listings pages of Little Village have a lot to cowl. There is, after all, the annual Iowa City Book Festival, heading for its 18th version in October 2026, in addition to common readings at Prairie Lights. There’s a summer time Arts Festival, which sees phases arrange throughout downtown. Other efficiency venues embrace the Riverside Theater, the Englert, the James Theater and Elray’s Live & Dive.
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The Trumpet Blossom Cafe, a well-reviewed vegan restaurant within the south finish of city, additionally places on stay performances — though nothing within the esoteric league of the acclaimed “Feed Me Weird Things” collection it and different venues hosted below the aegis of Chris Wiersema, a much-loved champion of the underground music scene, whose premature loss of life in 2024 continues to be felt regionally.
For Sellergen, the thrill that comes from the school connection is a double-edged sword. Yes, there’s the jam-packed roster of cultural occasions and the thrum of younger individuals maintaining bars and eating places alive, however there’s additionally the sense of subletting town to youngsters who can typically be obnoxious.
“When the students disappear over the summer break, it’s known as 90 days of heaven,” she says. “It’s so quiet. There’s parking everywhere. It’s clean and it feels like you have the place to yourself. In winter, when they go on their break, it feels depressing, and you miss them.”
Those colder months might be arduous to endure in Iowa City, however as quickly as spring arrives, the middle really comes alive. The bushes that line the Ped Mall blossom into full leaf and heat breezes loft bald eagles into blue skies. And there are the straightforward small-town advantages of working into previous and new associates whereas having fun with lunch or a drink on the patio of upscale grocery retailer Bread Garden Market.
That downtown vibrancy isn’t a completely happy accident however the work of native companies and people often known as the Iowa City Downtown District who fought to protect it from the whims of builders or remodeled purely into a night leisure zone.
Instead, says Karen Kubby, a former president of the group, co-owner of the bead and jewellery retailer Beadology, and all-round native legend, it’s nonetheless a actual city or metropolis? heart that’s open from early morning into late night. “It’s not just a place for the lunch crowd,” she says.
And whereas it actually has a vigorous nightlife thanks to bars and eating places like Deadwood Tavern, Pullman Bar & Diner, the Dublin Underground, Orchard Green and Basta Pizzeria, there are strict guidelines to ensure that these are blended with retail and different companies.
Kubby, who grew up on the transfer as an Army brat, is one other outsider who was lured to Iowa City by its relaxed nature and eccentric educational streak. “I knew as a sixth grader that when I figured out what I wanted to be, I could be that in Iowa City,” she says. “You can be someone who always turns left and wears purple and green and you can find your people here. There’s a lot going on.”
Not all the perfect spots are within the coronary heart of city. Around the nook from George’s Buffet, a basic previous tavern on East Market Street, is Hamburg Inn No. 2, a correct classic diner that’s price visiting a minimum of as soon as for the fried hen and possibly a couple of instances, in case your waistline can deal with it, for the pie shakes — milkshakes made with ice cream and slices of pie, pastry included, which can be sometimes served earlier than or alongside mains. Chunky, calorific genius.
“It works — they make it work,” says JoAnna Voss, a University of Iowa regulation college pupil sharing a pie shake with mother Janette Voss, herself a U of I graduate. “I love that they bring it out first.”
Dessert-forward seems to be a custom right here. Newspaper clippings framed on the wall commemorate the day in 1992 when President Ronald Reagan dined at the exact same desk because the Vosses and polished off apple pie and ice cream earlier than tucking into meatloaf and French fries. Bill Clinton and pre-presidency Barack Obama have additionally dined right here, the sequences of their meal consumption unrecorded.
If pie shakes aren’t sufficient to sate candy cravings, it might be price taking a journey south out of city into Amish nation, alongside gravel backroads frequented by horse-drawn buggies. Near the city of Kalona is the Amish-run Golden Delight Bakery, the place freshly made apple fritters and half-moon pies are amongst treats definitely worth the half-hour drive.
“If we’re in this vicinity, we love to stop for the doughnuts — they have a taste and consistency like nowhere else,” says Millie Colper, who was visiting the bakery with husband Kirk. “We tell everyone they’re the best.”
Just down the street from Kalona is a group that has been remodeled by storytelling of a very completely different type. As devoted followers of sci-fi present “Star Trek” know, Riverside, Iowa will, on March 22, 2228, turn out to be the birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk.
It’s an affiliation the agricultural city has wholly embraced. As effectively as erecting a gravestone to commemorate the longer term arrival of its well-known son, Riverside has hung “Star Trek” pennants from streetlamps, included the “Star Trek” emblem into pedestrian crossings and adopted the next slogan, written full with humorous strikethrough on the facet of municipal autos: “Where the best trek begins.”
The Voyage Home Riverside History Center, the place a scale mannequin of the unique USS Enterprise sits within the parking zone, is a spotlight. Through the doorways (which make the whooshing sound from the Nineteen Sixties present) is a lovingly gathered assortment of “Star Trek” memorabilia, together with toys, artworks, costumes and authentic set props.
Alejandro Navarro, a tattoo artist, was visiting the museum on a street journey from his house in Willmar, Minnesota to see a rap live performance in Memphis. His abiding love of “Star Trek” is testomony to the emotional energy of fiction. He recounts stumbling throughout an episode of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” whereas within the grip of melancholy following his mom’s loss of life.
“I couldn’t live my life properly and it was having an effect on everyone around me,” he says. “Then ‘Deep Space Nine’ came along and I watched it. It slapped me in the face with a message of forgiveness and acceptance, and I felt the weight lifted off my shoulders. If I hadn’t seen that, I would still be living in misery — ‘Star Trek’ saved me.”
Back in Iowa City, there are different tales to uncover. In the Oakland Cemetery on the northern fringe of city, a statue often known as the Black Angel stands watch over a household grave. The statue’s undoubtedly eerie look, coupled with native lore that claims kissing or touching it should lead to loss of life, impressed a new three-day music festival this 12 months.
And over in Prairie Lights, writer Candice Wuehle is coping with these powerful questions from her viewers — a few of whom are additionally her college students from the University of Iowa, the place she teaches a course on Taylor Swift and poetry, amongst different issues. As an Iowa City native who additionally has a Master’s in inventive writing from the U of I, Wuehle thought of studying at Prairie Lights as a long-held dream.
“The questions here are so smart,” she says after fielding enquiries about her writing voice and self-editing routine. “Everyone is so educated when it comes to craft and references, you get requested really fascinating issues — it’s nerve-wracking. It’s not the standard ‘where do you get your ideas?’
“I get the impression that other authors really appreciate how educated the audience is here.”
That mentioned, the Iowa City literary scene isn’t what it used to be. A city as soon as full of book distributors now has simply two correct impartial shops: Prairie Lights and the Haunted Bookshop.
Prairie Lights co-owner Jan Weissmiller recollects the instances when visiting authors have been acquired like rock stars at occasions hosted by the college. “Readings used to be one a day, attended by 200 people,” she says. “When Seamus Heaney learn right here, they’d to transfer it to a greater venue in order that 800 individuals might get in — it was marvelous.
“That doesn’t happen now. Even Seamus Heaney would struggle to get 150 people, because he would be competing for people’s attention with everything else that’s going on.”
Weissmiller isn’t completely certain that internet hosting fewer writer occasions is a unhealthy factor when it comes to preserving high quality and maintaining readers .
It’s a sentiment not removed from the one expressed by writers’ program graduate Flannery O’Connor in a quote captured on IC’s Literary Walk, a parade of sidewalk plaques celebrating authors with native connections: “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.”
The sidewalk plaques, every designed to replicate the character or content material related to their featured writer, are price spending an hour or so perusing as a part of a literary tour that may be expanded to absorb historic buildings linked to the writers’ program and the previous properties of the writers themselves.
Dave’s Fox Head Tavern, an unassuming nook pub on East Market Street, is a becoming final cease on any literary crawl of Iowa City. A real throwback to more durable ingesting instances, the Fox Head’s inside has modified little because the days when Vonnegut and Carver would occupy its darkish picket cubicles, maybe glimpsing potential plots and characters by the cigarette haze.
Part lounge, half neighborhood bar, the partitions listed here are cluttered with previous clocks and dusty stuffed animals, together with the titular Fox Head. There’s Pabst Blue Ribbon on faucet, a busy pool desk and a strictly cash-only coverage. On some nights there are poetry workshops, on others, Alex the barman picks up his guitar and jams with regulars in between serving beers.
Drinkers may additionally encounter Dave himself. Having taken over the bar many years in the past, Dave Alberhasky has lived his life within the Fox Head, accumulating extraordinary tales alongside the best way.
But, says Alex, these are Dave’s tales, and his alone to inform .