U Iowa Press

03/06/2025

So excited to have Everything Flirts: Philosophical Romances by Sharon Wahl included in this amazing list!!

03/06/2025

Meet Virginia!

What you do at the Press: "Managing editor's assistant."

What you actually do at the Press: "Perfect the art of a break room chai (it's a work in progress)."

What are you reading right now? "MONARCH by Candice Wuehle ()."

What UIowa Press title excites you right now? "HIGH DESERT BLOOD by Andrew Brininstool ()."

03/05/2025

24 hours left to enter our giveaway for Darell Kinsey’s NATCH. We printed too many advanced reader copies and wanted to share them with you:)

Just comment on today’s (or yesterday’s) post and share what independent publishers mean to you. We’ll enter each account into a raffle for a free copy.

(Editorial aside: this book is harsh and minimalist and achingly vibrant. We’re asking ourselves: how do you reduce that for social media? The answer, we hope, is that you don’t! You read and find out.)

03/04/2025

As an independent press, we’ve never been great at the hard sell. But that’s kind of the point. We’re book nerds who are excited to create and share books so long as we can keep the lights on.

Today, we wanted to confess: we ordered too many advanced reader copies of Darrell Kinsey’s NATCH!

Let us know what independent publishers mean to you in the comments (or DMs), and we’ll enter you into a raffle for a free copy of this tender, heart-splintering novel. Check out our website for a full description 🪵

(Also, stay tuned for tomorrow. We’ll have figured out video excerpts by then…)

03/04/2025

Kudos to the Bur Oak Land Trust's Backyard Biodiversity Project to get the community planting more native plants! If you're wondering where to start, check out GARDENING WITH NATIVE PLANTS IN THE UPPER MIDWEST by Judy Nauseef: https://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/gardening-native-plants-upper-midwest

Happy Planting!

Ecologist and author Doug Tallamy said, "If Americans replanted half of their lawns with native plants, shrubs, and trees, we would have more wildlife habitat than all the national parks combined."

With this idea in mind and support from a city of Iowa City grant, we created the Backyard Biodiversity Project to get the community planting more native plants.

Sign up here: https://buroaklandtrust-bloom.kindful.com/e/native-shrub-project

Native plants are better suited to the local environment and require less resources like water and fertilizer to thrive. Native plants also provide more biodiversity in the ecosystem and provide food for a variety of insects, birds and animals.

Now through April 4, Iowa City residents can sign up for a free bundle of shrubs or a container of prairie plants. Each order will come with planting and care instructions. Limit one bundle or container per household.

Help support Iowa's native bees and other wildlife with native plants!

03/02/2025

Read as you revel, revel in what you read!

For 's March/April 2025 issue, I highlight:

• Code Noir, by .lubrin ()
• Time Cleaves Itself, by ()
• Mother Archive, by ()
• Looking for Cazabon, by Lawrence Scott ()

Find them at the Caribbean Beat website (link in bio) or on page 30 of the beautiful flipbook, here: https://issuu.com/.../caribbean_beat_march_april_2025_187_

Remember, reading the Caribbean means you read the world.

03/02/2025

It’s been a minute, so we thought we’d reintroduce ourselves. All month, we'll say hi to each member of . Meet Susan (and her former student)!

What you do at the Press: "I serve as Managing Editor."

What you actually do at the Press: "I obsess over finding the perfect pen and fret over former interns' careers like a mad mother hen."

What are you reading right now? "BELOVED by Toni Morrison, for the NEA's Big Read."

What UIowa title captivates you right now? "Natch is a tragic read that witnesses humanity in a simple, quiet, and honest manner."

02/23/2025

Are you stuck writing and rewriting the phrase: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?” Does workshopping dialogue with friends feel like talking to ghosts? When you see a blank page, does it make you want to tear off your jacket and dive head-first into the snow? (Maybe don’t do that last one.) 👻🥶🎬

Great for beginners and experts who want to resee the “basics” through a new set of eyes, SCREENWRITING FOR NEUROTICS is an antidote to horror-movie levels of writerly frustration. We’re proud to have published Sublett's handbook, which isn't just about tips and tricks—it's also a love letter to quirkiness, wit, and accessibility!

02/21/2025

“if i had gotten pregnant at the age / a woman inflates to the sound of applause. if i had gotten an earful / from nature about my rotting vessel, still, i can’t invent a story where / i carry the doll from room to room, pausing, there, there, with the palm.”

Extending and defying the American sonnet, 's debut poetry collection NO SWADDLE is a must-read for fans of , .brown, and . Mark your calendars for April 10th!

02/19/2025

Can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about the weather has us gazing longingly at our guides…

Winter is beautiful in its own terrifying way, but we’re excited for Spring. And while we’re excited for Spring, we’re excited to get a better look at all the greenery native to Johnson county, whether that’s hiking with our families or biking the trails maintained by ICORR. Before the snow melts, read up on vines, shrubs, gardening, grasses, and a whole array of Iowan flora and fauna. Say thank you to your local conservationist!

02/15/2025

Who hasn’t wanted to disappear into the woods and live “like some wild thing let loose on the world”? But what happens when love—and heartbreak—pulls us back?

For fans of meshamaren, davidjoy_author, and taylorbrown82, Darrell Kinsey’s new novel NATCH finds heart in gas stations and hunting cabins in the foothills of Northern Georgia. Here is a brutally real world aware of its dysfunctions, and yet, pressed against them in the name of family and future. A world in which in which finding more work means finding more danger.

02/10/2025

This year, our authors wrote Valentines for their local indie bookstores 💌 Filmmaker and author of the forthcoming I AM HERE YOU ARE NOT I LOVE YOU, aidanlyaeus, sends love to fitz_books_and_waffles:

Fitz Books and Waffles
No one does it like you,
We’ll see you on Main Street
Good luck with the move!

02/06/2025

Announcing the Winner of the 2025 John Simmons Short Fiction Award! Congratulations to Jennifer Sears, whose collection WHAT MENNONITE GIRLS ARE GOOD FOR will be published this fall.

In these eleven stories a Mennonite minister’s daughter moves from a youthful, exuberant understanding of her family’s faith toward religious doubt. Stumbling comically at times, Ruthie navigates life with and without the rules and values in which she’s been raised. Always physical, often sexual, Ruthie’s search for personal truth leads her from missionary outposts in Paraguay and Brazil to Mennonite towns in northern Indiana and central Kansas, vandalized Native American ruins, women’s healthcare clinics, and lingerie shops on the secular, melancholy east coast.

These stories consider how faith and identity intertwine, the cost of leaving one’s community and cultural heritage, and the complicated longing for return.

Jennifer Sears’s writing has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Witness Magazine, Guernica, Ninth Letter, Fence, the North American Review, and elsewhere, and she has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. A graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program in creative writing, Sears is associate professor of English at New York City College of Technology/City University of New York. Like the main character in these stories, Sear’s father was a Mennonite minister.

02/06/2025

Announcing the Winner of the 2025 Iowa Short Fiction Award! Congratulations to , whose collection LOVE, DIRT will be published this fall!

From the intimate confines of a Nebraska farmhouse to the bustling streets of South America, the characters of LOVE, DIRT traverse uneasy spaces in search of human connection. A closeted teen on a trip to Chile, hides in his parents’ bedroom to avoid being caught fooling around with a local boy. A father becomes convinced a daycare has swapped his toddler with an imposter. And a son’s long-deceased parents return to life as fumbling, inept zombies, more nuisance than threat.

Filled with compassion, humor, and striking stylistic variety, Bruce Johnson’s bold debut explores the narratives we craft for ourselves and others, striving to move forward—one small, wavering step at a time.

Bruce Johnson holds a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Southern California, as well as an MFA in creative writing from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. More of his work can be found at brucejohnsonfiction.com

02/05/2025

“Gamers love reading rulebooks,” writes Mazzanoble, “so why not give them a rulebook for parenting?” Whether you played back in the eighties, just got into D&D podcasts, or are hoping to pass on a love of the Forgotten Realms to your little goblins, Mazzanoble’s HOW TO DUNGEON MASTER PARENTING is the perfect February read!
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02/03/2025

Look out for Joseph G. Petersons THE PERTURBATION OF O coming this Spring! If you, too, love replaying arguments in the shower and/or feel like memoirs and daytime television can be exploitative (with a smile?), then this book is for you. Stay tuned for details. (You may also never want to write about exes again…)

02/02/2025

📚✨ Join for a FREE virtual chat about the craft of fiction! Marguerite Sheffer will be discussing her debut story collection, The Man in the Banana Trees. She will be in conversation with Zach Powers, author and Artistic Director at The Writer’s Center.✍️✨

📅 Date: Feb. 6, 2025 🕒 Time: 7:00PM 📍 Location: ZOOM]

🔗 Link to Event

02/01/2025

February may be the month of Valentines, but that doesn’t mean it has to be ALL about romance. Stefaniak’s THE SIX-MINUTE MEMOIR is a brilliant reminder to keep falling in love with the small things: 6th grade diaries, low-budget SFX, swims that hide your tears, and daydreams about how the ducks outside your house descended from dinosaurs. What better time than now to turn those notes into a micro essay? ❤️📝📚