2011 pdf - International Writing Program - University of Iowa

Participants:
Adisa Basić - was born in 1979, studied Comparative
Literature, German and Librarianship at the
University of Sarajevo, earned an M.A. in Human
Rights and Democracy, and published a first poetry
collection at the age of nineteen. Her second poetry
volume, Trauma-Market, appeared in 2004 and the
award-winning collection “A Promo Clip for my
Homeland” in 2010. She has participated in many
regional and European poetry events, and is widely
published in regional literary magazines. She
writes on cultural affairs for the independent
weekly Slobodna Bosna.
Vicente Garcia Groyon - won the Manila Critics
Circle National Book Award both for the novel The
Sky Over Dimas (2004) and for On Cursed Ground and
Other Stories (2005). He is the editor of several
anthologies and collections of Filipino fiction and
has written four film scripts, including Agaton and
Mindy (2009) and Namets! (2008). He teaches
creative writing at De La Salle University in Manila.
Eduardo Halfon - was born in Guatemala City in
1971 and holds an engineering degree from North
Carolina State University. His novels include Esto no
es una pipa, Saturno, De cabo roto, El ángel literario,
El boxeador polaco, and La pirueta, which won the
José María de Pereda Prize for Short Novel in
Santander, Spain. His short fiction has been published
in English, French, Italian, Portuguese,
Serbian, and Dutch. He has taught literature at
Guatemala’s Universidad Francisco Marroquín. In
2007, the Bogotá Hay Festival listed him as one of
39 best young Latin American writers.
Billy Karanja Kahora - is the managing editor of the
Kenya-based journal Kwani and of the Picha
Mtaani/Kwani book project, and has edited the
collection Kenya Burning. His writings have
been published in Granta, Kwani and Vanity
Fair; he has a book of creative nonfiction, The
True Story of David Munyakei (2009) and the
script credit for Soul Boy (2010, Dir. Tom Tykwer)
and Nairobi Half-Life (2011).
Khet Mar - is a journalist, novelist, short story
writer, poet and essayist born in Burma. Author
of the novel Wild Snowy Night, three collections
of short stories and a volume of essays, she has
had work translated into Japanese, Spanish and
English, broadcast, and made into a film. In
2009 she was a featured writer at the PEN Word
Voices Festival, and is currently writer-inresidence
at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh, which
provides sanctuary to writers exiled under
threat of severe persecution in their native
countries.
Kei Miller - is the author of three books of
poetry, two novels and a collection of short
stories, and the editor of the anthology New
Caribbean Poetry (Carcanet, 2007). Short-listed
for a number of major literary awards, he is the
recipient of Jamaica's Silver Musgrave medal
and the Una Marson Prize for Literature. He
teaches creative writing at the University of
Glasgow.
Alice Pung - was born in Melbourne to Cambodian
parents. Her memoir Unpolished Gem won
the 2006 Australian Book Industry Association
award for Newcomer of the Year, and other
prizes. Her work was included in Best Australian
Short Stories 2007, and a story collection, Growing
Up Asian in Australia, appeared in 2008. My
Father's Daughter will come out in 2011. A
lawyer by trade, she contributes regularly to The
Monthly and The Age.
Madeleine Thien - is the author of Simple Recipes,
a collection of stories, and Certainty, a novel,
which was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize and
won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel
Award. Her work has appeared in Granta, The
Walrus, Five Dials, Brick, and the Asia Literary
Review, and been translated into sixteen
languages. In 2010 she received the Ovid Festival
Prize, awarded to an international writer of promise.
A novel, Dogs at the Perimeter, is forthcoming
in 2011.
Sahar Sarshar (Filmmaker) - has a BA from George
Mason University and a MA in Film and Video
from Emerson College. She has worked on
productions for Animal Planet, Voice of America
and Win TV, among many others, and on film
projects in Norway, France and Tanzania. She is
also involved with NGOs addressing pediatric
AIDS and promoting women in journalism.
WRITERS IN MOTION EXTRAS:
View Sahar Sarshar’s film documenting the 2011
Writers in Motion tour here:
http://iwp.uiowa.edu/programs/us-study-tours
Read the participating writers’ blog entries from the
tour here:
http://writersinmotion.blogspot.com/
View interviews with participating writers from the
tour at the IWP’s YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/IowaIWP
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