Vince Gotera

Cedar Falls 
Email: vince.gotera@uni.edu

Vince Gotera is the Poet Laureate of Iowa, appointed in 2024. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Northern Iowa, where he taught for almost 30 years. He served as Editor of the North American Review, the nation’s longest-lived literary journal, 2000-2016, and of Star*Line, the print journal of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, 2017-2020. Gotera has published over 300 poems and is the author of five poetry collections: Dragonfly, Ghost Wars, Fighting Kite, The Coolest Month, and Dragons & Rayguns. He blogs at The Man with the Blue Guitar.

Speculative Poetry: Science Fiction and Fantasy
Speculative Poetry is an up-and-coming genre of literature that includes science-fiction, fantasy, and horror. Vince Gotera has written speculative poetry for years and his upcoming book, Dragons & Rayguns, collects some of his poems in those fields. He is currently circulating for publication his book Aswang Love, a novel in poems about two aswang (mythical Philippine monsters) who have fallen in love and try to live as ordinary humans. Gotera is available to talk on the history and specifics of speculative literature as well as share and discuss his own speculative poetry.

Writing Poems
Vince Gotera is available to give either lectures or hands-on workshops on how to write poems — incorporating such poetic elements as sound and imagery; employing such poetic forms as sonnets, haiku, free verse, and more; exploring your own stories as well as the history of places you've lived; expanding your imagination by writing about nature, science, and a whole world of topics. This presentation can be adjusted to suit poets who are just beginning, or those who have written a bit and would like to expand their skills.

Lectures and Workshops
Besides the two presentations suggested above, Vince Gotera can give lectures and workshops on a broad range of literary subjects and genres: for example, on such social topics as race and ethnicity, the environment, music and literature (he is a working rock musician, playing bass and guitar), the arts, as well as writing not just poetry but also fiction and creative nonfiction.

Danuta Hutchins
Storm Lake
Phone: (712) 732-6779
Email: hutchinsd@bvu.edu

Danuta Zamojska Hutchins, of Storm Lake, was born in Warsaw, Poland and experienced the ravages of Nazi occupation, their reprisals for the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and Poland’s fall to communism after its liberation by the Soviet Army. Dr. Hutchins left Poland in 1962 to study American literature and language at the University of Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. in Modern Languages, Education and Linguistics from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Dr. Hutchins has taught Slavic Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Buena Vista College (now University) at Storm Lake, Iowa; Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana; Iowa State University at Ames, Iowa and Ohio State University at Columbus, Ohio. She has also taught courses in German Language, Literature and History and Russian Language and Literature at Teikyo-Westmar University and Westmar University at Le Mars, Iowa from which she retired at its closure in 1995. She has authored many papers and book chapters in her field and has written four books of general interest. Her early retirement enabled her to devote her time to her artwork, resulting in several successful group and solo exhibits of paintings, etchings and sculpture.

Dr. Hutchins and her husband, a professor of Chemistry at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, have two grown children, Edward and Maria.

The Butterfly Effect: ­ Why Do We Feel Empathy with the Victims of War, Hunger, Terror and Natural Disasters?
Referring to her book, “Torn Out Memories,” Dr. Hutchins tells the experiences of a child living under the Nazi occupation of Poland and during the Warsaw Uprising. She relates her personal trauma to the terrors suffered by the victims of 9/11 attacks.

Herbert Hoover’s Role in Distributing Food in Post WWI and WWII in Europe
As a child, Dr. Hutchins experienced firsthand President Hoover’s distribution of food in Poland after WWII. A chapter in her book, “Torn Out Memories,” gives details of those experiences and her connection with the Hoover birthplace in West Branch.

Sacred and Profane Art Presented in Power Point
are the issues and images of the human body in European art of the Middle Ages through the present. Images selected include examples of figurative paintings, drawings and caricature, as well as sculpture. Discussion centers on both the aesthetic and the philosophic considerations of the human image as a vehicle of veneration and beauty versus that of scorn and distortion.

Flowers of the Prairie
With a copy of the “Prairie and Woodland Flowers Coloring Book” as reference, this presentation identifies prairie wildflowers, their common English names and Linnaeus-based classification in Latin. It informs when they blossom, where they grow and what medicinal and food uses have they served during the times of early pioneers and Native American Peoples. With the “hands-on” component of drawing/coloring images of those flowers, this presentation can be taken to the local prairies or prairie gardens and tailored to specific ages and interests upon request.

Understanding and Reading Slavic Poetry in English Translation
This presentation includes recitation and discussion of poems and short poetic works written by the most outstanding contemporary Slavic authors, centered especially on women poets. Discovering some intimate details in their biographies and significant events surrounding them and their epoch enhance the understanding of selected works and bring these poets to life. Some humorous commentaries on the idiomatic and cultural differences between the works’ original language and that of the English translation provide a glimpse into the task of literary transposition from a very personal vantage point by Danuta Hutchins, herself a poet and published translator of many poetic works into and from the English language.

Bill Koch
Cedar Falls
Work Phone: (319) 273-6231
Home Phone: (319) 233-9137
Email: william.koch(at)uni(dot)edu

Bill Koch received a Ph.D. in American Studies from St. Louis University and is an adjunct professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Northern Iowa. He has been a Whitman re-enactor since 1997, appearing at various Civil War encampments in Iowa, and presenting his show “Walt Whitman Live!!” in numerous venues, including the Old State Capital in Springfield, Illinois. A portion of this show can be seen online at Mickle Street Review's website http://micklestreet.rutgers.edu/1.mov

Walt Whitman Live!!
In this one hour program, Walt Whitman, portrayed by Dr. Bill Koch, will highlight major poems from his poetry collection, Leaves of Grass. In addition, Whitman will pay tribute to Abraham Lincoln with a description of the nation’s obsequies and recitations of the Gettysburg Address and “O Captain, My Captain.”

Prairie Whitman
Walt Whitman’s poetry of nature is highlighted. In this presentation, we see an older Whitman, as portrayed by Koch, hobbled by a stroke but finding strength from his contact with trees, babbling brooks, the prairie and the night sky. The show can be done with little technical support, although it can also be staged in theater-like settings.

Brooks Landon
Iowa City
Phone: (319) 335-0454
Email: brooks-landon@uiowa.edu

Brooks Landon is a Professor in the University of Iowa English Department, where he teaches courses on contemporary literature, including science fiction, and a Prose Style course devoted entirely to the many forms sentences can take. He is currently fascinated by the apocalyptic turn in contemporary postmodern fiction, and has become something of an expert in forms taken by our current fascination with zombies, devoting a course, “Dead is the New Alive” to the question: Why do we apparently need all these zombie stories? His postmodern fiction course, “Masters of Disaster,” focuses on the many kinds of non-zombie apocalypses that have recently appeared in literary fiction. His Prose Style course is built around his book, Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds Sentences We Love to Read. Landon earned his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and has been at Iowa since 1978.

A User’s Guide to Postmodern Fiction
Postmodernism means many different things in many different contexts. Postmodern architecture is not the same as postmodern fiction and postmodern fiction comes in more flavors than a well-known ice cream purveyor has flavors. Postmodern fiction comes after modern fiction, but modern fiction still gets written. Postmodern fiction is a reaction against modern fiction, but still shares many of its concerns and characteristics. Postmodern fiction is a mess. And, whatever it was, it’s almost certainly over, possibly replaced by a sensibility that is post 9/11.

For purposes of this talk—but without relying too heavily on critical jargon, I’ll consider postmodernism largely in terms of Lyotard’s description of it as a resistance to meta-narrative (“big” narratives that claim to explain everything, such as religion or Marxism) and of Jameson’s description of it as a “cultural dominant” (an attitude or atmosphere that pervades everything). More specifically, I define postmodernism as the culture of the easy-edit, a time when science and technology allow us to change just about anything. And I define postmodern fiction as fiction that rises from or responds to postmodern culture.

It’s probably more accurate to speak of postmodernisms than of a single postmodernism and it's almost certainly more accurate to speak of postmodern fictions than of a single postmodern fiction. So, I’ll be talking about a fair number of novels that approach postmodern concerns from a fair number of different angles—books by familiar authors such as David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo, as well as books by younger and lesser known authors such as William Gibson, Jonathan Lethem, Chuck Palahniuk, Mark Leyner and Max Brooks. My goal will be to create a broad context in which readers can more specifically place some of their own favorite authors and have a better idea of what they are up to.

Building Better Sentences: A Quick and Dirty and Pretty Much Grammar-Free Guide to More Effective Writing
Best-selling and critically acclaimed American novelist Don DeLillo has written: “This is what I mean when I call myself a writer. I construct sentences.” And Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham has written: “I’m still hoping to write a great sentence. If I do, I’ll let you know.” I will show how attention to a very few ideas can help anyone write better sentences. This is a talk about all the important ways sentences get longer—and shorter. We will learn about how they work, what they do and how we can think and talk about them in ways that will help both our own writing and our reading. Our concern will be with stretching our sense of options—all the things a sentence can be and/or do—not a trudge toward grammatical correctness and avoidance of errors, but a dance with language, a celebration of the gift of style.

Barbara Lounsberry
Cedar Falls
Work Phone: (319) 939-6513
Email: Lounsberry@gmail.com

Barbara Lounsberry recently retired as a Professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa. She was named the University’s Distinguished Scholar in 1994 and its Outstanding Teacher in 1998. She is particularly interested in the subjects of Midwestern life and literature. Born and raised in Iowa, Professor Lounsberry believes Iowa culture, like its soil, is incredibly rich.

Barbara is pleased to deliver her presentations on Zoom or in-person. 

Yup…Nope…and Why Midwesterners Don’t Say Much
The writer Ernest Hemingway made a virtue of Midwestern reserve. Reticence became part of the Hemingway “code,” and the strong, silent type came to be associated with honor and heroism. This half-in-jest, whole-in-earnest presentation (with slides) explores the historical roots of Midwestern reserve, along with contemporary illustrations. As one Midwesterner deadpanned on return from the East: “We think we are being polite when we wait for people to finish their sentences; they think we are slow-witted.”

Nancy Drew: Iowa’s Heroine to the World
Nancy Drew is the most popular female detective in fiction. Few know, however, that Nancy is an Iowa heroine and that her creator was Mildred Augustine of Ladora. Nancy Drew and Mildred Augustine are extraordinary role models for Iowa girls and boys, women and men. An academic pioneer (the first woman to earn a master’s degree from the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism), Augustine earned six airplane pilots’ licenses, including one for sea-planing, wrote 130 stories for young people and wrote her newspaper column, “On the Go,” until her death at age 98. Augustine wrote in the first Nancy Drew volume, The Secret of the Old Clock, published in 1930, “Nancy Drew took pride in the fertility of her state and saw beauty in a crop of waving green corn as well as in the rolling hills and the expanse of prairie land.” This program, with lots of images, is meant to inspire young and old.

The Charm of Diaries
This multi-image program describes the value of diaries as history, literature and more. Part of the charm of diaries and journals is that they come today in so many different forms—from the much-too-small 5-year locked diary to today’s blogs. One doesn’t have to write every day to be a sublime diarist. The program celebrates some of Iowa’s most famous diarists.

Debra Marquart
Iowa Poet Laureate
Iowa State University
515-290-7731
marquart@iastate.edu

Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and Iowa’s Poet Laureate. Her work explores the relationship between the spoken word, the literary arts, storytelling, and music. Marquart has published six books, including Small Buried Things: Poems, and The Horizontal World: Growing up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, and she continues to perform with her jazz-poetry, rhythm & blues project, The Bone People, with whom she has released two CDs: Orange Parade (folk/rock) and A Regular Dervish (jazz-poetry). Her work has received over 50 grants and awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a PEN USA Nonfiction Award, a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation, and Elle Magazine’s Elle Lettres Award, and has been featured on the BBC and National Public Radio. She is the senior editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, and she teaches creative writing in ISU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.

POETRY, MUSIC & THE ENVIRONMENT

Debra Marquart is available to read from her creative work (poetry, fiction, memoir) and to perform music alone, or with her band, The Bone People. A singer-songwriter, Marquart fuses poetry, music, and storytelling in her performances. The topics in Marquart’s five books and ongoing research projects range widely to include the following: agriculture and rural life; music performance and popular music history; immigration and travel; and environmental issues such as oil extraction and climate change. 

Kurt Meyer
St. Ansgar
meyer6601@aol.com

Kurt Meyer’s ancestors preceded Hamlin Garland’s family in moving to and living in Mitchell County, Iowa, where Meyer now lives. Meyer has studied Garland’s life and work extensively, emphasizing the importance of Garland’s Iowa years, 1868–‘81, between the ages of 8 and 21. Meyer has published two books of essays on Garland, conceived and wrote the forward to “Prairie Visions,” (a book featuring Garland-related photographs), and presented Garland papers at four American Literature Association conferences. For eight years, Meyer has coordinated annual Garland poetry readings and he has delivered lectures on Garland in dozens of venues in seven states.  

Before returning to Iowa, Meyer lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where he first became interested in Edna Ferber, the community where the Ferber family moved after leaving Ottumwa. It led to an intense examination of Ferber’s life and times, her circle of friends (including the infamous “Algonquin Roundtable”), as well as her many diverse literary works. While their lives were dissimilar in many respects, Meyer finds familiar patterns in backgrounds and careers of these two authors—the first two Pulitzer Prize winners with links to Iowa. 

Iowa’s Claim to Prize-Winning Authors

Among the distinguished authors with an Iowa connection are Pulitzer Prize winners Hamlin Garland (1860–1940) and Edna Ferber (1885–1968). Both spent significant childhood years in Iowa—Garland in northeast Iowa, and Ferber in Ottumwa. And both drew on their Iowa backgrounds throughout prolific writing careers.

Meyer’s presentation will introduce people to these two often-overlooked/forgotten authors: their lives, their major works, their pioneering careers, and their importance in the literary world, during their prime years as well as today. Although they led very different lives, Meyer will focus on shared talents that made them successful and the personal and professional qualities they held in common.

Using Garland and Ferber as examples, Meyer will also suggest informal ways that Iowans can encourage and promote future generations of Pulitzer Prize winners.

Please note: the fee for the first ten scheduled events for this program will be waived under the Democracy and the Informed Citizen Initiative.

This program is part of the Democracy and the Informed Citizen Initiative, administered by the Federation of State Humanities Councils. The initiative seeks to deepen the public’s knowledge and appreciation of the vital connections between democracy, the humanities, journalism, and an informed citizenry.

We thank The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their generous support of this initiative and the Pulitzer Prizes for their partnership.

Monica Schmidt
Phone: (612) 387-3153
Email: sweeper887@gmail.com

Monica Schmidt, MA, LMHC, IADC, is a licensed mental health counselor specializing in substance abuse treatment. She holds a Bachelor's in Psychology and Criminal Justice from Mount Mercy College, a Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology from St. Mary's University, and another Bachelor's degree in Cinema Studies and Media Culture from the University of Minnesota. She is the current president of The Younger Stamfords of Iowa City, a Sherlock Holmes literary society, and is a member of multiple Sherlockian societies across the US and Canada, including The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) and The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes (ASH).

Will the REAL Sherlock Holmes please stand up?

A 60-minute presentation delineating the differences between the literary Holmes and the Holmes of pop culture. Filled with movie clips exploring the evolution of the character. Perfect for civic groups -- can be shortened to 30 minutes or lengthened to 60 minutes.

The Seven Percent Evaluation

A 40-minute clinical analysis of Sherlock Holmes's cocaine use throughout the 60 Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories. This presentation seeks to definitively answer the question of "Was Sherlock Holmes an addict?" from a modern viewpoint. Presentation is accessible to both professionals and general lay audiences.

The Curious Case of the Bipolar Detective

A 40-minute exploration into the clinical world of Sherlock Holmes's mood swings throughout the 60 Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories, while also educating about clinical diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. Presentation is accessible to both professionals and general lay audiences alike.

Mary Swander
Iowa Poet Laureate (former)
Phone: 319-683-2613
Email: swandermary@gmail.com
Website:  www.MarySwander.com

Mary Swander, poet, playwright and non-fiction writer, draws her inspiration from the landscape and its people. From the Iowa Amish to the New Mexico mystics, she has captured the extraordinary folkways and idioms in the ordinary person's life.

Mary is not currently available for in-person events. She is pleased to offer the following presentations via Zoom. 

Squatters on Red Earth

Mary Swander will lead a discussion about the writing and production of her new work Squatters on Red Earth, a play composed under the guidance of members of the Meskwaki Settlement, and supported by grants from Anon Was a Woman Environmental Art Award (The New York Foundation for the Arts) and The State Historical Society of Iowa, Inc. The drama is a one-man show starring Rip Russell, directed by Brant Bollman. The play explores the issue of the white settler land grab from the Native Americans. The core story revolves around a peaceful encounter between the Meskwakis and the Inspirationists, a German Utopian group, all the while the colonialists were forcing the Natives from their land.

Discussions, Readings and Maybe a Banjo
Mary Swander will talk and discuss the state of poetry in contemporary society, illustrating her ideas with her original work, including the classic "Driving the Body Back" and her recent collection The Girls on the Roof, a Mississippi River flood saga. The author of twelve books, numerous plays and radio commentaries, Swander brings energy and humor to the page and to her audiences. And sometimes she even brings her banjo.

Responses to Map of my Kingdom and Vang
Mary Swander will provide the cultural and historical contexts surrounding her plays Map of my Kingdom, a drama about farmland transition, and Vang, a drama about recent immigrant farmers. Swander will detail how she wrote both dramas and she why was compelled to take on these contemporary agricultural issues. Land access is a pressing problem for beginning farmers in the U.S. Over half of the current farmers are over the age of 65, but will these retiring landowners be able to transition their property to younger folks? Many immigrants come to the U.S. with agricultural knowledge and experience, but find it difficult to set themselves up in farming. How will they find a piece of the American dream? The audience will be encouraged to ask questions and share their own experiences.

Response to Farm-to-Fork-Tales
Mary Swander will discuss how agriculture is the mother of all arts, and in particular how food and farming give rise to stories of the land and the culinary arts. She will talk about how gardening, cooking, and agriculture have provided material for her own writing and how family histories about food and farming pinpoint the larger historical markers of our time—from the Irish potato famine, to the Dust Bowl, to our recent immigration raids in packing plants. Food and farming stories have also released some of the best jokes, tall tales, and humor in American folklore. Audience members will be encouraged to tell their own stories and discuss their significance.

Sarah Uthoff
Iowa City
Phone: (319) 351-2100
Email: sarah@uthoff.us
Youtube:  www.youtube.com/user/Trundlebedtales

Sarah Uthoff received both her history education BA and her Masters of Library Science from the University of Iowa. She is the former director of the Oxford Public LIbrary in Oxford, Iowa, and currently serves as a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College in Cear Rapids, Iowa. An active Laura Ingalls Wilder researcher, Sarah is a regularly-featured speakers at the annual Laura Ingalls Wilder Remembered Day at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch. She has spoken at five of the Laura Ingalls Wilder sites located in Pepin, WI; Independence, KS; Walnut Grove, MN; Burr Oak, IA; and De Smet, SD.

Sarah's consulting work has included designing the Laura Ingalls Wilder Girl Scout Patch Day at Usher's Ferry Historic Village in Cedar Rapids and a training session for the staff at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Burr Oak, Iowa. Her unique programs can be customized for the type of group (adults, children, mixed), and the type of presentation desired. Sarah can present as a modern day reseracher or constumed as either a young or older Laura. Find Sarah all around the web at http://about.me/sarah_uthoff

General Laura Program
The basic Laura Ingalls Wilder program gives a general overview of Laura’s life. It features slides taken at all the Laura sites and is good for any age group.

Packing Up
Look in on Laura Ingalls Wilder as she is packing up to move to Missouri. Each artifact in the old chest holds a story. 

In the Kitchen with Laura
In the Kitchen With Laura mixes stories and information about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life with food history and hands-on cooking. It’s the 1930s and we find ourselves in Laura’s kitchen as she’s dealing with all the food coming in from a bountiful summer garden. Catch up with the story of her life while we learn what’s cooking.