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International writers’ roundtable at the Community Book Center

The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP), in conjunction with Room 220 and the Community Book Center, presents an open roundtable discussion with a group of accomplished authors from around the globe on Friday, September 30, at 5 p.m. at the Community Book Center (2523 Bayou Rd.).

The Iowa IWP has brought international writers to study as part of the university’s prestigious writing program since 1967. One of the IWP’s stated goals is to “introduce talented individuals to American life,” and to do so the program takes the writers out of the cornfields on week-long excursions to cities like San Francisco and New Orleans. The writers will be in town Tues. – Sat., Sept. 27 – Oct. 1, touring the city, taking in some live music, and dropping into classes at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, the Bard Early College program, and Loyola University New Orleans. They’ll also be in attendance at Michael Martone’s reading at the Antenna Gallery on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m., as well as the Community Book Center event.

The discussion at the Community Book Center on Friday will be an informal event, and will provide members of the New Orleans writerly and readerly communities an opportunity to converse with this diverse group of professional international authors about issues both individual and universal, that affect New Orleans or the writers’ home countries, or both and everyone in between. The event is free, and will likely prove the international literary event of the season.

Participating writers’ biographies:

The Martone Guide to Good Writing

By Christopher Hellwig Christopher Hellwig is author of a forthcoming collection of biographies of fictional gunslingers, a former student of Michael Martone’s, and will read with his mentor (along with former classmate and Martone protégé Michael J. Lee) this Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at the Antenna Gallery. Event details here. #1: Hypoxia Per Martone’s The Martone Guide to Good Writing

SCUMBAG CINEMA – Desperate Living

Sick! Twisted! Dirty! Repulsive! Calling all degenerates! Come out for the Scumbag Cinema Series! Get out of the flop house, crack house, or from under that bridge and come by for some of the weirdest films you’ve never seen! This stuff’ll stain your mind and be sure to send your soul straight to hell!  Admission SCUMBAG CINEMA – Desperate Living

SCUMBAG CINEMA – Teenage Tupelo

Sick! Twisted! Dirty! Repulsive! Calling all degenerates! Come out for the Scumbag Cinema Series! Get out of the flop house, crack house, or from under that bridge and come by for some of the weirdest films you’ve never seen! This stuff’ll stain your mind and be sure to send your soul straight to hell!  Admission SCUMBAG CINEMA – Teenage Tupelo

SCUMBAG CINEMA – Dr. Caligari

Sick! Twisted! Dirty! Repulsive! Calling all degenerates! Come out for the Scumbag Cinema Series! Get out of the flop house, crack house, or from under that bridge and come by for some of the weirdest films you’ve never seen! This stuff’ll stain your mind and be sure to send your soul straight to hell!  Admission SCUMBAG CINEMA – Dr. Caligari

MICHAEL MARTONE short story collection release party

Michael Martone—author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction and contributor to Harper’s, Esquire, The Best American Essays and The Best American Short Stories—will celebrate the release of a new book of short stories along with two of his former students, Michael J. Lee and Christopher Hellwig on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at the Antenna Gallery.

SCUMBAG CINEMA – Forbidden Zone

SICK! Twisted! DIRTY! Repulsive! Calling all degenerates! Come out for the new Scumbag Cinema Series! Get out of the flop house, crack house, or under that bridge and come by for some of the weirdest films you’ve never seen! This stuff’ll stain your mind and be sure to send your soul straight to hell!  Admission SCUMBAG CINEMA – Forbidden Zone

Michael J. Lee on Michael Martone

Michael J. Lee lives above a barber shop on St. Claude Avenue. Before that, he studied in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama under Michael Martone. On Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m., Lee and his former classmate Christopher Hellwig will read with Martone as part of the Live Prose at the Antenna Gallery reading Michael J. Lee on Michael Martone

From The New Orleans Review: “Gerner’s Retired Lives of Gunslingers” by Christopher Hellwig (excerpt)

The current issue of The New Orleans Review includes, among much else, poetry from Joshua Edwards and Srikanth Reddy, essays by Samantha Cohen and Mike Miley, fiction by Jacob Appel (selected by Nancy Lemann as the inaugural winner of the Walker Percy Fiction Contest) and an excerpt from Christopher Hellwig’s forthcoming collection of fictional gunslinger From The New Orleans Review: “Gerner’s Retired Lives of Gunslingers” by Christopher Hellwig (excerpt)