Iowa City is far from "sleepy" when the 30,000 students leave during the summer months.
Joy Riggs of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune mentioned the many exciting attractions of summer in Iowa City and Coralville, in her article University Town Bustles in Summer.
Between last weekend's Arts Festival, the annual Iowa City Jazz Festival (this year the festival is June 29-July 2) and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, Iowa City residents and visitors have much to look forward to in the summer. Other attractions mentioned in the article include fossils that the 2008 flood has revealed in Coralville Lake, the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History's dioramas (housed in MacBride Hall on the Pentacrest), local food and craft beer at Short's Burger, Shine and the Motley Cow, live music every Friday in the Pedestrian mall, and concerts and theater happenings at the 100 year old Englert Theater.
Riggs also mentions our main attractions for "literary-minded visitors": visitors can attend fiction, nonfiction, and poetry readings throughout the summer at Prairie Lights Bookstore, a bibliophile's mainstay since 1977. Literary folks can also discover the Iowa Avenue Literary Walk, plaques along Iowa Avenue created to celebrate the work of 49 writers, both those who have attended the many writing programs at the University of Iowa (such as the Iowa Writer's Workshop) and those who were born in Iowa.