ADMINISTRATION
staff | advisory
committee | annual reports
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| Program
staff |
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Christopher Merrill, Director
100 Shambaugh House
319-335-2609
christopher-merrill@uiowa.edu
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Christopher Merrill has published four collections of poetry, including Brilliant Water and Watch Fire, for which he received the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; translations of Aleš Debeljak’s Anxious Moments and The City and the Child; several edited volumes, among them, The Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature and From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O’Keeffe as Icon; and four books of nonfiction, The Grass of Another Country: A Journey Through the World of Soccer, The Old Bridge: The Third Balkan War and the Age of the Refugee, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars, and Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, his journalism appears in many publications, and he is the book critic for the daily radio news program, The World. He has held the William H. Jenks Chair in Contemporary Letters at the College of the Holy Cross, and now directs the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa.
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Hugh G Ferrer
Associate Director
100 Shambaugh House
319-335-3856
hugh-ferrer@uiowa.edu |
HUGH
FERRER earned an AB in Philosophy from Princeton University and an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has been with the International Writing Program since 2001. He also serves as the Fiction Editor of the Iowa Review and is working on his first novel.
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Natasa Durovicova
Editor
100 Shambaugh House
319-335-2089
natasa-durovicova@uiowa.edu |
NATASA DUROVICOVA grew up in Bratislava (Czechoslovakia) and Sweden. She has
a BA in Drama and Film from University of Lund and a MA in
English from University of California at Santa Barbara. Over
the years she has divided her time between scholarly writing
(mainly on the topic of cinema and polylinguality), teaching,
editing and translating. |
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KELLY BEDEIAN received a BA degree in Linguistics from
the University of Iowa, after which she served as a Peace
Corps volunteer in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. Kelly went
on to work on a variety of professional development and
exchange programs as a Program Manager at CONNECT/US-RUSSIA,
a non-profit organization based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In 2001 Kelly returned to life overseas, working with the
International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) first
as a Program Manager for the Community Connections program
then later in a dual role as the Country Manager for the
IREX/Armenia office and the Regional Manager for the Internet
Access and Training Program in the Caucasus Region. Kelly
joined the IWP staff in 2004.
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Melissa Schiek
Secretary
100 Shambaugh House
319-335-0218
melissa-schiek@uiowa.edu |
MELISSA SCHIEK recently moved to Iowa after living for twenty-three years on the island of Maui. She has worked in many fields, from teaching to office management. She now lives in the Kalona area, and is pleased to have joined the administrative team of the International Writing Program. |
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Mary Nazareth
Housing Assistant
100 Shambaugh House
319-335-0128
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MARY
NAZARETH was born in Tanzania and is of
Goan descent. She is in charge of the day-to-day lives of the
International Writing Program participants. She assists the
Program with practical matters and helps writers with the variety
of needs that arise from their adjustment to living in Iowa
City. She has been associated with the IWP for over 25 years. |
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Peter Nazareth
100 Shambaugh House
319-335-0448
peter-nazareth@uiowa.edu |
PETER
NAZARETH, from Uganda of Goan descent, is Adviser to Foreign
Writers. He has published several books of fiction and criticism,
including the novel In a Brown Mantle. Educated at Makerere
University and Leeds, he is Professor of English and African-American
World Studies. His course, Literatures of the African Peoples,
received the Distinguished Independent Study Course Award from
the National University Continuing Education Association. His
second novel, The General Is Up, was reprinted by TSAR
Books, Toronto. A collection of critical essays on the work of
Ngugi is forthcoming. His work has been translated into Hungarian,
Polish, Japanese, Korean, Bengali, Hebrew, Arabic, Serbo-Croatian,
Portuguese, and Konkani. He teaches a widely-publicized course
on Elvis as Anthology at the University of Iowa.
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Kiki Petrosino
Program Assistant
100 Shambaugh House
319-335-3281
kiki-petrosino@uiowa.edu
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KIKI PETROSINO has been with the program since 2005. She holds an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Forklift Ohio, Unpleasant Event Schedule, and elsewhere. Her awards include a post-graduate writing fellowship from the UI and a "waitership" from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Vermont. |
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Kecia Lynn
Project Assistant
100 Shambaugh House
319-384-3296
kecia-lynn@uiowa.edu |
KECIA LYNN is a native of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. She received a BA in English from Case Western Reserve University in 1987 and an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2007. Between degrees, she lived in Chicago and worked in the information technology industry. Her prose has appeared in Black-Eyed Peas for the Soul and Ducts, and she wrote and read a personal narrative that aired on WBEZ-FM as part of the yearly multimedia public affairs series Chicago Matters.
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Steve McNutt
Post-Graduate Fellow
100 Shamabugh House
319-335-0128
stephen-mcnutt@uiowa.edu |
STEVE MCNUTT has a B.A. in Art and Political Science from Bucknell University and an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa. At the UI, he was an Iowa Arts Fellow and T. Anne Cleary Fellow and taught undergraduate classes in composition and creative nonfiction. His work has appeared in The Believer (upcoming), the Des Moines Register, The Morning News, and on WSUI's Weekend America (Iowa Edition). His essay "SUV vs. Bike, SUV Wins" was a finalist for the Florida Review's 2006 Prize for Nonfiction. Other attempts at negotiating the vagaries of late capitalism include two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African country of Gabon, and stints as a cartoonist, Internet company project manager, and freelance designer.
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Jordan Stempleman
Open World Coordinator
100 Shambaugh House
319-335-0128
jordan-stempleman@uiowa.edu |
JORDAN STEMPLEMAN is a second-year MFA candidate in Poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the author of Their Fields (Moria, 2005), What's the Matter (Otoliths, 2007) Horse Sense (Dusie, 2007) and Facings (Otoliths, 2008). Recent work has appeared in The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, The Continental Review, New American Writing, Noon, and P-Queue. |
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Joseph Tiefenthaler
Transportation Coordinator
100 Shambaugh House
319-335-0128
joseph-tiefenthaler@uiowa.edu
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JOSEPH TIEFENTHALER is a native Iowan who received his BA in English from the University of Iowa in 2005. At the UI, he was Editor-in-Chief of Earthwords, the undergraduate literary magazine. Currently, he divides his time between the IWP office and serving as an Editorial Assistant at the Iowa Review.
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