2024 International Writing Program (IWP) panel Writing with the weight of the world Writing with the weight of the world /

Video game - 2024

A conversation between three IWP 2024 Fall Residency writers on the theme of "Writing with the Weight of the World," followed by Q&A. This event is supported by University of Iowa International Programs and the Stanley-UI Foundation Support Organization. Lyuba Yakimchuk (poet, playwright, screenwriter, performance artist; Ukraine) is the author of the poetry books Абрикоси Донбасу [Apricots of Donbas] (2015) and Як мода [Like Fashion] (2009), as well as the plays Wall and Schrödinger's Cat. She also wrote the screenplays for both the film Slovo House. Unfinished Novel (2021) and the documentary Slovo House (2017). Yakimchuk was a songwriter and spoken word artist on the album Ukrainian Songs of Love ...and Hate (2022) and coauthor with Mary Branley of the libretto for the musical Freedom Letters. Her writing has been translated into more than twenty languages, and she read her poetry as part of John Legend’s performance during the 2022 Grammys. Her work has been covered by The New York Times, BBC, CBC, and CNN. Her participation is made possible by an anonymous gift to the IWP. Pervin Saket (poet, novelist, editor; India) is the author of the novel Urmila (2016), the poetry collection A Tinge of Turmeric (2009), and a series of ten biographies in verse for children. She won the Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize in 2021 and was awarded the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive Fellowship the same year. Her most recent poetry manuscript was a finalist for the Gaudy Boy Prize and the Wheelbarrow Books Prize 2024. She works as an editor for academic textbooks, serves as the poetry editor for The Bombay Literary Magazine, and is currently writing her second novel. Her participation is made possible by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Tabish Khair (fiction and nonfiction writer, journalist, poet, academic; Denmark) was born and educated in the small town of Gaya in Bihar, India. An Indian citizen, he now resides in Denmark, where he teaches in the Department of English at the University of Aarhus. His most recent novels are Just Another Jihadi Jane (2016) and The Body by the Shore (2022). His first collection of short fiction is Namaste Trump & Other Stories (2023). Oxford University Press will publish his new nonfiction book, Literature Against Fundamentalism, in 2024. He participates courtesy of the Paul and Hualing Nieh Engle Fund. more