Beyond the Books: Meet our Iowa Writers and Students!
Beyond the Books: Five Questions for Writers in our University of Iowa Literary Community
Welcome to the 5Q Interview series! Each year, the Writing University conducts a series of interviews with writers while they are in Iowa City participating in the various University of Iowa writing programs. We sit down with authors to ask about their work, their process and their descriptions of home.
Featured Interviews
Elisa Ferrer Molina, Spanish Creative Writing MFA
Full Collection
5Q Interview: Bethany Kaylor, MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Writing Program
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
"Giving myself permission to experiment with something new—like writing an essay in the form of dictionary entries modeled after Bob Flanagan's The Book of Medicine—is so exciting and invigorating."
5Q Interview: Connor French, Undergrauate in Cinema and Screenwriting Arts
Monday, May 5, 2025
"I knew in high school that I wanted to study Cinema and Screenwriting, so I was looking for a university with a rigorous writing program, in a location that would foster my love for art."
5Q Interview: Emma Athena Murray, MFA Candidate in Literary Translation
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
"I was thrilled to come to the University of Iowa and join the awesomely diverse writing communities here (poets! novelists! essayists! comic writers!)"
5Q Interview: Kendin Scheitlin, a UI Undergraduate Majoring in Cinema
Thursday, April 24, 2025
"Being able to create art or write about something that directly relates to the world around me currently makes me feel like I have a special place in history."
5Q Interview: Miharu Yano, MFA candidate in the Translation Workshop
Monday, April 21, 2025
"Translation is a craft that requires a lot of discipline and focus, and I usually try to find large chunks of time (4+ hours) rather than small increments."
5Q Interview: Fion Tse, MFA candidate in the Literary Translation
Thursday, April 17, 2025
"For me, the biggest source of inspiration for any translation project I’m working on is the source text itself! Translation forces you to read intimately, and you have to be quite intimate to rewrite the text in a different language."
5Q Interview: Lydia Meth, Cinematic and Screenwriting Arts
Monday, April 14, 2025
"...the entire city seemed to glow and support its students. I fell in love with the literary walk downtown and the numerous cafes that undoubtedly housed so many aspiring writers."
5Q Interview: Grace Morse, MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Writing Program
Monday, April 7, 2025
"I am a near-daily journal-er; it's my precious, private place. Writing at night is akin to glory for me these days, and I love to light candles and enter my body in an extra-intentional way."
5Q Interview: Alan Valdez, MFA Candidate at the Spanish Creative Writing Program
Thursday, April 3, 2025
"And then I wake up, open the windows, make my coffee, think about places I’ve been and people I’ve loved. I send good morning messages, sometimes I teach Spanish classes, sometimes I go to the store to buy food for the week."
5Q Interview: Irene Rodrigo, MFA Candidate in the Spanish Creative Writing Program
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
"... lately I’m getting to discover how useful can be for me to write outside from home. Some days I go to the public library of Iowa City, where I can find the silence I need to edit my texts or keep writing them. Some other days I go to cafés ..."
5Q Interview: Jessica Alexander, an instructor at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival
Thursday, March 13, 2025
"If you can make a single sentence do the work of 3 sentences or a paragraph—then, you’ve probably written a compelling sentence. In flash every word communicates."
5Q Interview: Laura Jaramillo, instructor at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival
Friday, March 7, 2025
"This course gives you the opportunity to intensely focus on the visual aspects of writing poetry and how they affect the ways we understand poetry."
5Q Interview: Kat O'Brien, instructor at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival
Thursday, March 6, 2025
"...I'll be sharing my top-secret tips and tricks that I love to tell everyone for how to blast past obstacles on the page, and embrace all the joy in your creative process."
5Q Interview: Spencer Lane Jones, an MFA candidate in the Nonfiction Writing Program
Monday, February 10, 2025
"I became an early bird writer because I had to be, and it hasn't really left my body."
5Q Interview: UI Press Author Erika Morillo
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
"In this image-text memoir, I create an archive out of a myriad of sources: family photographs, images I’ve made, news clippings, videos, and conversations. "
5Q Interview: Solenn Vincent, editor of The Broken Clock Magazine
Friday, November 22, 2024
"Broken Clock is unique in the fact that it focuses on time. This can be as specific or as vague in the submissions as the contributors would like, but all the pieces are centered around a specific topic within time."
5Q Interview: UI Press Author Sharon Wahl
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
"The book opens with stories of new love—crushes, first dates. There is a longer story tracing a relationship from beginning to end, followed by stories about breaking up and then starting over, finding just the right person to fall in love with again."
5Q Interview: UI Press Author Shelly Mazzanoble
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
"As a parent, you can’t help but wonder if you’re doing it right, where you’re falling behind, is everyone having more fun than you, do these kids even like me??? I think that way as a parent and a Dungeon Master."
5Q Interview: UI Press Author Marguerite Sheffer
Monday, November 11, 2024
"The stories are completely unlinked, and encompass a mix of genres: there’s horror, science fiction, historical fiction, and a ghost story or two, alongside quite a bit of flash fiction."
5Q Interview: IWP resident Han Junghyun
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
"I wrote a lot of novels on my iPhone while riding the subway or bus. I write on my iPhone while preparing meals in the kitchen."
5Q Interview: Mélanie Werder Avilés, IWP Resident
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
"...so far, I'm liking Iowa City a lot: I've been cycling all over it, and the amount of writers you find per square meter is exciting."
5Q Interview: UI Press Author Aaron McCollough
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
"At some point around 2018, I spontaneously started writing pieces that I trusted in a way I hadn't for a long time."
5Q Interview: UI Press Author Melody S. Gee
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
"Language acquisition is something I’ve thought about a great deal in my life—my parents learning English, my navigating English and Cantonese, and various language extinctions in my life."
5Q Interview: UI Press Author Amy Frykholm
Monday, October 14, 2024
"I generally write for about three hours and then panic about the things on my to-do list."
5Q Interview: Zhang Chu 张楚, IWP Resident
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
While contemporary attention often centers on urban life, I want to explore and illuminate the hidden narratives and solitary lives in rural settings.
5Q Interview: Okamoto Kei 岡本啓, IWP Resident
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
"Right now, I'm still dreaming about that something, something that is neither a novel nor a poem."
5Q Interview: Nathalie Chang, IWP Resident
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
"There are two wonderful periods of time for me to write in Iowa: one before 8:00 and one after 17:00, because the sunlight then is so tender and sublime."
5Q Interview: Anna Davtyan Աննա Դավթյան, IWP Resident
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
"I have the full confidence that anything deeply private is completely universal. So I think what is privately Armenian and privately mine is good literature for everyone to read."