“When we are bewildered by existence, art is the way we try to put a frame around a piece of reality and make sense of it. Seeing other people do that work, whether it’s on the page or listening to music, or watching a film, feels like a balm to me right now. Even if the only meaning they can make is a representation of their own bewilderment, it makes me feel less solitary.”

Iowa City author Garth Greenwell spoke about art in the time of isolation as part of Mission Creek Underground. Mission Creek Underground is a six performance series with local musicians and authors provided virtually. The performances were filmed at The Englert Theatre and are available for viewing on the Mission Creek website, and the festival’s YouTube and Facebook accounts.

Greenwell is the author of two books, Cleanness and What Belongs to You. These two titles have accrued many accolades, including but not limited to a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, an IndieNext Selection, and British Book Award for Debut of the Year. He writes in various genres, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, among other publications.

The format was quite different from the typical reading at Prairie Lights that the Iowa City literary scene has come to know. Greenwell read underneath the glow of a lone spotlight on stage of the Englert Theatre to empty seats, but with a familiar warmth.

“I think art is what we turn to when we want to communicate what our lives feel like on the inside. And so, art, for me, is the greatest experience I have of intimacy with other consciousnesses.”

In addition to talking about creating art in this uncertain time, Greenwell read from his most recent book, Cleanness. The collection was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in January of this year. The first selected passage that he read came from the beginning of the story “The Frog King.” Greenwell described the passage as being about the joys of ordinary happiness, of being with another human being, and the happiness of touch.

The following is an excerpt from the reading:

I was still groggy with sleep when I turned in to the main room, and I stood uncomprehending for a moment before I realized that R. had rearranged things in the night. He had moved the table to the middle of the room, and had placed my winter boots on top of it, beside the little tree we had bought earlier that week. Sticking up from the boots were packages wrapped in newspaper, his Christmas gifts for me; he must have hidden them somewhere after he arrived, he must have got out of bed in the night, careful not to wake me, he must have been quiet as he moved the furniture. I caught my breath at it, I felt a weird pressure and heat climb my throat. I felt like my heart would burst, those were the words for it, the hackneyed phrase, and I was grateful for them, they were a container for what I felt, proof of its commonness. I was grateful for that, too, the commonness of my feeling, I felt some stubborn strangeness in me ease, I felt like part of the human race.

Mission Creek Underground is currently ongoing and will run from April 1st-4th with all acts viewable on their website.

The post Mission Creek Underground: Garth Greenwell appeared first on KRUI Radio.

The lineup for the 2020 Mission Creek Festival was released this week and the slate is brimming with a wonderful mix of new and returning artists. From April 1-4 next year, the downtown area will be flooded by countless members of Iowa City’s artistic community. Now in its fifteenth year, the music and literature festival continues to bring a wide range of entertainment to downtown Iowa City, with a variety of free programming to make the arts available to anyone.

Some returning favorites are bands Squirrel Flower and Pink Neighbor, both of which played at the festival within the last two years. Pink Neighbor is based out of Grinnell, Iowa, where Ella Williams—the voice behind Squirrel Flower—went to college. Iowa City musician Elizabeth Moen is also performing as part of Mission Creek again, playing at The Englert Theatre on Saturday of the festival weekend. Moen is a local favorite and just recently returned from a fall tour across Italy.

Another returning artist is writer Hanif Abdurraqib, a poet and essayist from Columbus, Ohio. Abdurraqib has become a household name in the literary world after his first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio. The collection was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. As part of Mission Creek in 2020, Adburraqib will read from his new poetry collection, A Fortune for Your Disaster, published by Tin House Books this fall.

The headliners at the Englert each night of the festival include writer Samantha Irby, punk rock band Parquet Courts, experimental group Sound for Andy Warhol’s Kiss, and indie-rock singer Lucy Dacus. In typical Mission Creek fashion, these headliners consist of blooming artists who have been performing for a while, but are still rather unknown to the general public who aren’t as familiar with the alternative or independent music scenes.

Other musical acts performing at the festival include Black Belt Eagle Scout, Hadiza, The Necks, OHMME, and more. Gabe’s will hold the late night performances for the more experimental groups of the festival like Pulsing, Tropical Fuck Storm, White Batzzz, and Mal Blum, among others. The upcoming lineup also features several artists who are recent graduates from the University of Iowa: Penny Peach Jr., Dog Dave, and Lily DeTaeye, among some of the young artists.

Iowa City is known for its literary community and the countless writers who have come through this area, and Mission Creek showcases literature just as much, if not more, than it does music. There is a selection of readings each day of the festival, highlighting local as well as visiting writers.

One of the key events of Mission Creek each year is the Lit Walk, in which listeners walk between locations around Iowa City for a selection of literary readings. The 2020 Lit Walk, which will take place on the night of Friday, April 3rd, includes readings from The Iowa Review, Canarium, Two Dollar Radio, Sarabande Books, and the Iowa Writers’ House, with several others along the stops of the walk.

Closing out the literary events on Saturday is the literary magazine and small press book fair at The Mill in the afternoon and the Keynote Reading, hosted at the Old Capitol Museum. This year’s keynote readers are Helen Phillips, Tommy Pico, and Kristen Radtke.

The 2020 Mission Creek Festival will take place in various locations around downtown Iowa City from Wednesday, April 1 – Saturday, April 4, 2020. See the entire 2020 lineup and schedule here.

The post Mission Creek Celebrates 15 Years appeared first on KRUI Radio.