From the deep-freeze of Iowa comes our Winter issue, with a slew of new poems, stories, and essays to warm up to: a Cyclops is hired by a P.R. firm in a story by Sharma Shields; Indian writer Suryabala skewers the tradition of literary prizes in an essay translated by Puja Birla; and Michael S. Harper discusses his development as a poet in an interview with Heather Treseler. Plus winners of our 2009 Iowa Review Award contest: Tricia Springstubb (fiction), Anne Marie Rooney (poetry), and Karen Hays (nonfiction). And much more.

Table of Contents, Winter 2009–10

Tricia Springstubb: In the Dark [pdf]

Anne Marie Rooney: What my heart is turning; Where my heart is going; Elegy in which I am not whisked away

Karen Hays: Dear Martlet

Mathias Svalina: War Games: Instructions

Fleda Brown: A Dictionary of Wooing and Deception in the Voice of the Sociopath; A Dictionary of What Can Be Learned in the Voice of the Sociopath's Lover; A Dictionary of the Symphony in the Voice of Ludwig van Beethoven

Priscilla Sneff: The Purification of Ben Matthews

Sharma Shields: The McGugle Account

Laura Kisischke: Song; The call of the one duck flying south

Marianne Boruch: One may read it walking: lauds and matins; I don't like this coolness, she said; The computer screen, day or night; Is this a mantra? mantra of; A shadow looms. And the bird feigns a broken wing

Heather Treseler: Office Hours: A Memoir and an Interview with Michael S. Harper

Heather Treseler: Thoracic Ode; Ribosomal Yoga

Michael S. Harper: Pull-ups at PS 25; Negritude: A Poem Written When Everything Else Fails to Translate

Robert Rehder: Voyage; K. 17

Jean Esteve: I By the Riverside; Free of Hounds

George Eklund: In a Dream of the Locust; Over the Puddles of East Berlin

Stacy Kidd: This is one of the nine wide worlds, and the creatures that inhabit it lull

Kodi Scheer: Gross Anatomy

Anna Lowe: Onset of Winter

Adam Day: Badger Eats; Badger Behaving Badly

David Wagoner: By the Empty Stone

Alyson Foster: The Theory of Clouds

Douglas Woody Woodsum: Fourteener 322 (Thank You, Dear Lord, for This Long, Cold, Dark Time of Inwardness)

James Capozzi: Talking Frotteur Blues

B. A. Wingate: Tomorrow pretends not to understand how today happened

Scott Zieher: Wintry Lodge on a White Mountain; From the Bureau of Threats and Opportunities

Suryabala: The Tradition of Prizes in Hindi Literature

Loren Glass: Conversations with Celebrity Authors [pdf]

David Hamilton: At the Fair III

On our cover: An 1843 map by Joseph Nicolas titled "Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River." This historical map is part of the David Rumsey Map Collection, a large online collection of antique, rare, old, and historical maps, atlases, globes, charts, and other cartographic items.

© 2009 The University of Iowa