Please join us for the IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series!  This week’s event features IWP Residents Sabyn Javeri (Pakistan, UK & UAE) and Okamoto Kei (Japan), and Writers’ Workshop MFA candidate Joshua Balicki (USA).
Sabyn Javeri (fiction and nonfiction writer, translator; Pakistan, UK & UAE) is the author of the short story collection Hijabistan (2019) and the novel Nobody Killed Her (2017). She is the editor of volumes 1 and 2 of the multilingual Arzu Anthology of Student Writing (2018–2019) as well as the creative nonfiction anthology by Pakistani women writers entitled Ways of Being (2023). Her fiction has been published in The London Magazine, Litro, Wasafiri, Oxonian Review, and more, while her nonfiction has appeared in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, South Asian Review, and 3 Quarks Daily, among others. She currently teaches writing at New York University, Abu Dhabi. Her participation is made possible by a gift from the estate of William B. Quarton to the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation.
Okamoto Kei (poet; Japan) is the author of three poetry books. His debut collection, Graffiti (2014), won two major early-career awards—the Nakahara Chūya Prize and the Mr. H Prize—and his second poetry collection, Zekkei Note (2017), won the prestigious Hagiwara Sakutarō Award. Okamoto also writes essays, designs his own books, and collaborates with artists in creating works for display in museums. He is currently writing a series of poetry reviews and critiques for the newspapers Tokyo Shimbun and Chunichi Shimbun. His participation is made possible by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
Joshua Balicki is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. He received an MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers and is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He’s taught for the Iowa First Nations Program, Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, Austin Bat Cave, and Austin Library Foundation. He’s from Waukesha, Wisconsin.