Books published by University of Iowa Press

"To survive romantic love, the woman served the other woman desert dirt with shells as the truck stop receded into the distance" - so observes the mordantly detached voice of a women, an extravagantly pained, self-and-other-lacerating imaginative journey dedicated 'to relationship'.

Romulus was the founder of Rome; and those tossed outside the city-gate are not Romulus's children but the cast-offs living in hovels, the Rumphulus. However, this isn't ancient Rome, but rather the nature preserve of a contemporary American suburb.

Gathers together seemingly contradictory narratives that intersect at the (in)visibility of race/ism in fandom and fan studies. This collection engages the problem by undertaking the different tactics of decolonization - diversifying methodologies, destabilizing canons of 'must-read' scholarship, and decentering white fans.

What does it mean to be instantly transformed into the most hated person in your community? After meeting Fidel Castro in 1994, Magda Montiel Davis soon found out. Kissing Fidel shares the sometimes dismal, sometimes comical realities of an ordinary citizen being thrown into a world of death threats, mob attacks, and terrorism.

A popular music phenomenon in the early 2000s, emo is short for 'emotional hardcore', and refers to both a music genre and a youth scene notable for its androgynous style. Judith May Fathallah pushes beyond the stereotypes and social stigma to explore how online fandom has shaped the definition of emo.

Brings together a rich collection of Betsy Erkkila's phenomenally influential essays that have been published over the years, along with two powerful new essays. Erkkila offers a moving account of the inseparable mix of the spiritual-sexual-political in Whitman and the absolute centrality of male-male connection to his work and thinking.

In the twenty-first century, reading and watching videos are related activities that allow people to engage with authors and other readers. Incorporating thousands of testimonials about what they read and why, Jennifer Burek Pierce explores the changing nature of reading in the digital age.

As time beings, what we have is the time being, the present moment, however compromised, however shattered. Buchanan's characteristic combination of wry humour, nerve, empathy, wisdom, and outrage exposes the laughably absurd and the evisceratingly tragic all at once.

Using an introspective personal voice, this narrative nonfiction work weaves stories of Iowa's natural history with a cast of unforgettable characters. Wildland Sentinel touches on what it means to be a woman working in the male-dominated field of conservation law enforcement.

In Sari Rosenblatt's collection, by turns tender and hilarious, we see fathers who are bullies and nervous watchdogs, haunted by their own pasts and fear of the future they may never see. Rosenblatt's comic sensibility, so present in these stories, entertains and consoles, while seeming to say to her readers: you might as well laugh.

Examines digital and real-world fan communities and the individuals who comprise them, profiling their relationships to Cash and each other. Studying Johnny Cash's international fans and their love for the man reveals new insights about music, fandom, and the United States.

Presents the 104 color photographs - selected from more than 2,000 photographs taken over a twelve-day trip - in sequential order to show, in photographer Barry Phipps words, "what does and does not change as one travels through shifting cultural and geographic regions."

Based on Jeanne Reesman's nearly thirty-five years of archival research, this book offers surprising perspectives on Jack London's many sides by family, friends, fellow struggling young writers, business associates, high school and college classmates, interviewers, editors, coauthors, visitors to his Sonoma Valley Beauty Ranch, and more.

Experimental poetry responded to historical change in the decades after World War II, with an attitude of such casual and reckless originality that its insights have often been overlooked. However, as Benjamin Lee argues, to ignore them is to overlook a rich resource for our own complicated transition into the twenty-first century.

Tom Rastrelli is a survivor of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse who then became a priest in the early days of the Catholic Church's ongoing scandals. This bok divulges the inner workings of the seminary, providing an unapologetic look into the psychosexual and spiritual dynamics of celibacy and lays bare system that perpetuates abuse and cover-up.

In his debut collection, William Fargason inspects the pain of memory alongside the pain of the physical body. Fargason takes language to its limits to demonstrate how grief is given a voice. His speaker confronts illness, grapples with grief, and heals after loss in its most crushing forms.

Offers a perceptive, tenacious investigation of gender, authority, and art. Jennifer Habel draws a contrast between the archetype of the lone male genius and the circumscribed, relational lives of women.

Illustrates the beauty and diversity of prairie through an impressive series of photographs, all taken within the same square meter of prairie. During a year-long project, Chris Helzer photographed 113 plant and animal species within a tiny plot, and captured numerous other images that document the splendor of diverse grasslands.

Shows how almost anyone can get involved in conservation and do something for wildlife beyond giving money to conservation organisations. In this fascinating and practical read, Greg Hoch blends historical literature with modern science, and shows how our views of conservation have changed over the last century.

Why have so many contemporary poets turned to source material, from newspapers to governmental records, as inspiration for their poetry? How can citational poems offer a means of social engagement? Michael Leong reveals that much of the power of contemporary poetry rests in its potential to select, adapt and extend public documentation.

Tracing the parallel lives of two women artists, Angel De Cora and Karen Thronson, at the turn of the twentieth century, art historian Elizabeth Sutton reveals how their stories intersected and diverged in the American Midwest.

At the most prestigious preparatory schools in the United States, the children of educators are referred to as "faculty brats". Dominic Bucca's art teacher mother married his music teacher stepfather twice, and the young boy wondered if the union might be twice as strong. Instead, he quickly discovered that the marriage was twice as flawed.

The characters in Happy Like This are smart girls and professional women who search for happiness in roles and relationships that are often unscripted or unconventional. The ten shimmering stories in this collection offer deeply felt, often humorous meditations on the complexity of choice and the ambiguity of happiness.

From a lightning death on an isolated peak to the intrigues of a small town orchestra, the glimmering stories in this debut collection explore how nature - damaged, fierce, and unpredictable - worms its way into our lives.

In 2010, Don Waters set out to write a magazine story about a surfing icon who had known his absentee father. It was an attempt to find a way of connecting to a man he never knew. He didn't imagine that the story would become a quest to understand a man who left behind almost nothing for his abandoned son.

A travelogue of writer Robert Clark's attempt to work a five-year-long obsession focused on Victorian novelists, artists, architecture, and critics. He wends his way through England and Scotland, meticulously tracking down the haunts of Charles Dickens, George Gissing, and others, and documenting everything in ghostly photographs as he goes.

Argues that careful attention to a particular strain of twentieth-century lyric poetry yields a counter-history of American global power. The period that Phillis covers - from Ezra Pound's A Draft of XXX Cantos in 1930 to Cathy Park Hong's Engine Empire in 2012 - roughly matches the ascent and decline of the American empire.

Tells the story of one woman's struggle to reclaim wholeness while mothering a son addicted to opioids. Paula Becker's son Hunter was raised in a safe, nurturing home by his writer/historian mom and his physician father. He was a bright, curious child. And yet, addiction found him.

Examining the deep philosophical topics addressed in superhero comics, authors Gavaler and Goldberg read plot lines for the complex thought experiments they contain and analyse their implications as if the comic authors were philosophers.