The Iowa Review
Fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations, photography & more
iowareview.org
Edited by faculty, students, and staff from the renowned writing and literature programs at the University of Iowa, The Iowa Review takes advantage of this rich environment for literary collaboration to create a worldwide conversation among those who read and write contemporary literature.
We publish a wide range of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, translations, photography, and work in emerging forms by both established and emerging writers. Work from our pages has been consistently selected to appear in the anthologies Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.
The Iowa Review publishes three issues per year (in April, August, and December) in both print and digital formats.
Available issues (click to explore):
Pages (PDF): 174
Publisher: Iowa Review
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IN THIS ISSUE
Pages (PDF): 193
Publisher: Iowa Review
Purchase includes: PDF
IN THIS ISSUE
Pages (PDF): 197
Publisher: Iowa Review
Purchase includes: PDF
IN THIS ISSUE
Pages (PDF): 193
Publisher: Iowa Review
Purchase includes: PDF
IN THIS ISSUE
Pages (PDF): 253
Publisher: Iowa Review
Purchase includes: PDF
IN THIS ISSUE
Pages (PDF): 281
Publisher: Iowa Review
Purchase includes: PDF
IN THIS ISSUE
Pages (PDF): 213
Publisher: Iowa Review
Purchase includes: PDF
IN THIS ISSUE
Pages (PDF): 190
Publisher: Iowa Review
Purchase includes: MOBI & PDF
IN THIS ISSUE
Seahorses making new seahorses; being dissolved by a tree; a charming sixth-grader with an explosive temper; your parents at Coney Island before you were born; the trouble with knives; Hansel, Gretel, and a Witch like a wolf in well-meaning skin; first kisses and electrocution
Poetry
Shane McCrae | Community
Richard Deming | Speak at This
Margaret Reges | Joplin Tornado, May 2011
James Galvin | The Hunchback | On the Sadness of Wedding Dresses | Cinque Terre | Take as Needed for Pain | A Sunday Morning in Humboldt County, California, circa 1980
Soren Stockman | Apples
C.S. Giscombe | Early Evening
Rusty Morrison | Everyone Is Noah | Everyone Is Noah | Everyone Is Noah | Everyone Is Noah
Jessica Laser | Poem with Lies | Television
Nathaniel Mackey | Song of the Andoumboulou: 108
Dora Malech | The Aquarium | Working Order
Mark Wisniewski | To Bukowski, #44
Christopher Bakken | A Poem Not Written by Yannis Ritsos on the Day of My Birth
Stephen Burt | Gymnastics Stephanie | To the Naked Mole Rats at the National Zoo
Fiction
Anna Maria Hong | from H & G
Joseph Fazio | The Girl through the Glass
Charles Johnson | The Weave
Mark Jude Poirier | All Is Not Lost
Doug Ramspeck | Bonjour Tristesse | Omphalotus Olearius
Lenore Myka | Day of Lasts
Delmore Schwartz | In Dreams Begin Responsibilities
Essays
Michael Meyer | The Photograph
Lia Purpura | Study with Crape Myrtle
Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich | The Trouble with Knives
Tom Lutz | Notes from the Albanian Diaspora
Susan M. Stabile | Bestiary
Interview
Michael DeRell Hill | Entangled Freedom: An Interview with Charles Johnson
Reviews
Kate Marshall | Eli Horowitz, Matthew Derby, and Kevin Moffett’s The Silent History
Alan Golding | Harryette Mullen’s Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary
Criticism
Jayne Anne Phillips | The Wound of Consciousness: An Introduction to “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”
Artwork
Gentleman Scholar | Working Order
Pages (PDF): 202
Publisher: Iowa Review
Purchase includes: MOBI & PDF
IN THIS ISSUE
What is an ash tree, or Liberace?, dusting the Buddha, finding you more indispensable than the serial comma, poles materializing in driveways, boys drawing cats, playing Captain Radiation after Chernobyl, a Mennonite auctioneer, and finding love in someone else's house
Poetry
Douglas Kearney | In the End, They Were Born on TV
Anthony Robinson | South Bend | Report
Norman Dubie | Jericho Radio | Children Standing in the Mist
Melissa Broder | Hope This Helps
Michael Robins | Never Get Sober | The Dumb Few
Sarah Crossland | The Boy Who Drew Cats
Michael Tyrell | Mirages | Delicatessen
Amber Tamblyn | Judith Barsi | Peg Entwistle | Laurel Gene
Fiction
Jeff Bender | The Guard
Mai Nardone | Beneath the Mountain
Pedro Mairal | Personal Hypnotizer (translated by Jennifer Croft)
Joe Aguilar | Poles
Maria Kuznetsova | The Accident
Zhang Yueran | A Room of One’s Own (translated by Jeremy Tiang)
Essays
Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel | Liberace and the Ash Tree
Nina R. Mishkin | Falling Off the Roof
Robert S. Brunk | Selling Everything
Interviews
Marjorie Perloff and Vanessa Place | How Poetic Is It?: A Conversation
Stephen Voyce | Of the Subcontract: An Interview with Nick Thurston
Reviews
Rebecca Morgan Frank | Kiki Petrosino’s Hymn for the Black Terrific
Anis Shivani | Dave Brinks’s The Secret Brain: Selected Poems 1995–2012
Artwork
Maury Gortemiller | Do the Priest in Different Voices
Pages (PDF): 200
Publisher: Iowa Review
Purchase includes: MOBI & PDF
IN THIS ISSUE
In this issue: how the Shed Lady died, perfect wax hands, a translucent honeymoon, fifty things about my mother, a mother becoming a bird, a bird renting a womb, a father-built playhouse, a father-gifted gun, dangling bulbs in stopgap towns, the body making room for our favorite ways, Kuwaiti latrines, and Who shoved Greg into the pool?
Poem
Brandi George | Lessons in Sacrifice | Two or More Daemon-Animals
Jerimee Bloemeke | Our Father Who Art in Heaven | Complete and Selected
Kim Sa-In | End of Mourning | Rainy Season | Springtime Sea | A Flower (translated by Brother Anthony of Taize and Susan Hwang)
Meredith Stricker | Hazardous Materials
Josh Kalscheur | Katari | The Final Place to Go
Cate Lycurgus | [I find every stopgap town]
Andrew Seguin | Notes from a Museum Guard | Apprentice
Colby Cedar Smith | To My Internal Cellist | The Roots Are Horizontal Ladders | A Pool of Colorful Koi | It's That Pop | I Want to Swing on That Swing Next to You
Kenzie Allen | Forensics | Pathology
Eric Weinstein | The History of Cardenio
Rebecca Lilly | The Orchardist | Abelon Graveyard | Hairy Old Man | Our Family Business | Uncle Lowry | The Water Goddess
L.S. Klatt | Suffused | Emergency on Waxed Paper
John Kinsella | Canola Anti-prayer
Martha Ronk | Drifts slid further off | Evidentiary | Illegibility
Ales Debeljak | Tightrope Walker | James Joyce Slept Here (translated by Brian Henry)
Story
Jennifer Bowen Hicks | Old News, Unverified
Shannon Robinson | Birdie
Marc Berley | What Kind of Bird Are You?
Ronit Feinglass Plank | Rick's Wax Hands
Elise Winn | Honey Moon
Melina Kameric | Red Lace Lingerie (translated by Jennifer H. Zoble)
Katie Cotugno | The Shallow End
Essay
Laura Lynn Brown | Fifty Things about My Mother
Bruce Snider | Ammunition
Meghan Flaherty | Womb
Elizabeth Merritt Abbott | The Female Latrine
Garth Greenwell | A Valediction
Review
Lee Konstantinou | Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge
Alan Wald | Jonathan Lethem's Dissident Gardens
Stephen Lovely | Jonathan Blum's Last Word
Artwork
Colin Edgington | [Umbrae]