A peek into this year's 'United Nations of Writers' workshop in Iowa

When poet Paul Engle left the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as its longtime director, he was thinking beyond “an alternative between Hollywood and New York.” In 1967, he founded the International Writing Program (IWP) which has been known as the United Nations of Writers. 

 

For years, IWP has been sending writers from various parts of the globe to Iowa City, Iowa. The city was named one of three world "Cities of Literature" by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 

 

This year, 34 writers from 32 countries were sent to the IWP Fall Residency including writers from first-time participating countries of Yemen, Bahrain and Burundi. 

 

Also, for the first time, IWP selected a community engagement fellow in the person of Portuguese playwright and fictionist Patricia Portela.

 

No plot talk

 

Just what goes on during IWP sessions?

 

Believe it or not, sometimes an author is not allowed to talk in the workshop, said Hugh Ferrer, associate director of the IWP.

 

Discussion centers on the language used in the manuscripts. They don’t talk about the plot.

 

“The workshops made me a better reader,” Ferrer said. “In a thousand manuscripts that we receive every year, there are only three that are worthy for publication. The students write not to get published.” 

 

Participants also get to hear from established authors their thoughts about writing.

 

“I write when am obsessed with a theme. I start with a question then I try to solve it. My projects are more about discovery,” said Portela during the International Literature Today (ILT) session, a course offered during Fall taught by poet Christopher Merrill and Natasa Durovicova (Merrill is the current director of the IWP while Durovicova is the editor of 91st Meridian, the program’s online journal).

 

“I see literature as a meeting point of culture, literature, and religion. There’s a little bit of science, cooking, and sculpture as well. Words are like light, they travel fast. Writings have time and space,” she said. 

 

She confessed that she is a compulsive reader. But as a novelist, she doesn’t like metaphor. “It is not my priority. But I like allegories.”

 

Portela compares books to onions. “My writings don’t have one point of view. The words are multi-layered. My writings are mostly multilingual and multicultural. I want to write about hybrid places. My stories are very visual, yet abstract. I work around the obvious. I write to make people think, not to tell (stories).”

 

The author of the novels "Para Cima e Não Para Norte" (2008) and "Banquete" (2012) and also the founder of the cultural association Prado, Portela has coordinated nearly 20 stage performances and live artworks across Europe, the Middle East, China and Brazil.

 

Voices from Bahrain, New Zealand, Germany and Burundi

 

The IWP sessions also let participants hear from authors from other parts of the world. 

 

Bahraini poet and fictionist Ali Al Saeed exclaimed, “I hate writing as much as reading!” His father forced him to read all the books in their library when he was young. As a writer, he is self-taught and self-developed. He accidentally became a journalist. But he considers himself lucky because he has time to write and make money.

 

Whiti Hereaka, a Maori playwright, novelist, and screenwriter from New Zealand, talked about her second novel "Bugs." Her debut novel "The Graphologist’s Apprentice" was shortlisted for the 2011 First Book in the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Asia/Pacific region).

 

"Bugs," released in New Zealand this month, is about a rabbit that could talk. Maori writers have read the stories about Uncle Remus, she said. “I wanted to write about the tar baby (“The Wonderful Tar Baby Story”) but I decided to write about the rabbit (the character Br’er Rabbit).”

 

Though "Bugs" is a young adult fiction, it discusses institutional racism and the perceived Maori privilege. Her publisher was a bit disconcerted about the ending of her novel because it sounded dystopian. But she was dauntless. “'Bugs' tackles issues that we need to face. Our being young and idealistic floats away,” she said.

 

Novelist Simon Urban from Germany pronounced that he is a “literary entertainer.” He produces art that nobody expects. “I write stories that no one has not told yet. I am very much interested in originality,” he said.

 

Urban was 15 years old when the Berlin Wall fell. “I wanted to talk about the dictatorship. I am very angry about being politically correct,” he said. He spices his thriller stories with humor, though he expressed that he put a lot of word plays in his novel that it would be very difficult to translate it in any language.

 

Roland Rugero, fictionist and journalist from Burundi, apologized because he can’t speak English that well, only in French. He is the author of the novels "Les oniriques" (2007) and "Baho" (2012), and the editor of the literary pages of Iwacu Magazine.  

 

He studied in a high school run by the Jesuit order. In his country, only the missionaries and the elite can write. “Theater is the most practical genre,” he pointed out in French, which was then translated in English by Durovicova.

 

Their official history stopped in 1962 when some forces seized political power. “After 1962, we have no clear definition of national community. We have no national history. It was a privilege for me to have taken the job of a journalist. My memories I write through fiction.”

 

The violence in his country is an assault against memory. His work as a writer is social transformative. But his writings are humorous. Without humor, there is a hardness, a shell. Humor softens the issues he tackles.

 

Asked why there are a lot of characters who are debilitated in his narrative like the one-eye blind and the mute, he said, “We are all disabled, somewhere, somehow.”

 

The ILT class takes place every week. —KG, GMA News

 

 

The author is a participant of the 2013 Fall Residency of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, USA.