Iowa Summer Writing Festival

One of the highlights of last summer was a week spent in Iowa City at the Iowa Summer Writing festival,  thanks to the gentle and persistent persuasion of a dear friend who has been trying for years to get me there. 

Now I know why so many people have been going back year after year.  It was exhilarating to be in the company of other people who love words – reading them, writing them, talking about them, and thanks to Iowa City’s literary walk, walking on them.  The Literary Walk is a series of bronze panels, connected by quotes about books that have been stamped into the concrete sidewalk.  Because each bronze plaque features short excerpts from the works of well known authors with ties to Iowa, those of us who love to read can do so while strolling along both sides of Iowa Avenue from Clinton Street to Gilbert Street.  There was good reason to go wandering through down-town Iowa City because of all the good restaurants, coffeeshops and galleries to be found there.  Not to mention the bookstores – like Murphy-Brookfield at 219 N Gilbert St, where in addition to finding an outstanding selection of carefully arranged used books, you can also make the acquaintance of a literary cat who lives in a box on the book-seller’s desk. And then there’s the famous Prairie Lights Bookstore,  which itself is worth a trip to Iowa City if for no other reason than to be reminded of why browsing through the nooks and crannies of an independent bookseller’s shop is so much more satisfying than the same old same-old that greets us when we set foot inside those clunky big box bookstores that are showing up everywhere.

Someone once said that he has always imagined paradise to be a kind of library.  Or how about a really terrific bookstore?  That sounds pretty heavenly to me.  On the other hand, books have also been my downfall.  (Literally.  Once I stumbled over a bag of books and ended up shattering my ankle so badly that I had to have a steel rod and 8 surgical pins implanted before I could walk again.) The problem with bookstores is that I keep stumbling over books I want to buy and I tend to agree with whoever it was who observed that the worst thing about buying new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones! Nevertheless that doesn’t stop me once I’m set loose in a bookstore.   And so, after spending much more money that I should have at Prairie Lights and Murphy-Brookfield, I should have simply headed back to my room at the Iowa House and stayed there until it was time to go home.  Instead, my friend Teresa and I walked around the corner and headed into the Chait Gallery  where I spotted a marvelous ceramic sculpture, titled the Obsessive Reader. 

Much as I tried to argue against something as impulsive as buying a piece of sculpture on the spot, in the end I just couldn’t resist.  And my friend Teresa proved to be no help at all. She kept agreeing with my rather lame argument that the sculpture would make a fitting memento of a week spent surrounded by books and writers.  (If I wanted a memento I could just as easily have picked up a University of Iowa coffee mug or tee shirt.  It would have been a lot cheaper.) In the end, of course I gave in and purchased the Obsessive Reader who I have christened “Lexie” - short for lectio the Latin word for reading.

The Obsessive Reader was created by Iowa artist Linda Lewis. You can check out her work at her website  or at the following galleries:

From Our Hands
E 4th & Locust
Des Moines IA 50309 

Outside the Lines Gallery
409 Bluff St.
Dubuque IA 52001

"People are attached, not only to what is inside books, but to the object itself, the old familiar form that first took shape over four centuries ago.  A laptop computer is a wondrous thing; it is inconceivable to me now that I ever did without one. . .but a computer is no substitue for a book. No one wants to take a computer to bed at the end of a long day to read a chapter or two before dropping off to sleep."
                   ~ Ann Quindlin
                  How Reading Changed my Life