Hosts

The Iowa Writers’ House is a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding the writing community in Iowa City by providing programming, workshops, and a welcoming community to use and enjoy by writers from all walks of life.

Nomadic Press is a non-profit organization that supports the works of emerging and established writers and artists, through publications (including translations) and performances, by which it aims to build community among artists across disciplines.

Featured Writers

Michaela Mullin

Michaela Mullin is a writer and editor living in Des Moines, Iowa. She earned her BA in English from Drake University; an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska; and her PhD in Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought from the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee, Switzerland). She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and recipient of the Helen W. Kenefick Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. The author of the full-length poetry collection, must (Nomadic Press), she is currently working with artist Kathranne Knight on a book about the degradation of language, mistranslation and asemic writing as textual and visual beginnings. Mullin is an arts writer for Moberg Gallery and Associate Editor for Nomadic Press.

Tureeda Mikell

Educator, consultant, poet, griot/elocutionist/story medicine woman, Tureeda Mikell began working the healing arts in 1977 via poetry, storytelling, and QiGong energy therapy. Mikell is the founder of Tree of Life Health Literacy Project and works in collaboration with California Poets in the Schools. In 2018, Mikell was the Eth-Noh-Tec NuWa Delegate from the US to Beijing, China, in Gengcun Village of renowned storytellers in collaboration with the University of Beijing on mission to heal cultural boundaries. She has been a featured reader with Kim Shuck, poet laureate of San Francisco, California; presented Al Young (named poet laureate of California in 2015) with the lifetime achievement award at the 2018 Berkeley Poetry Festival; and has opened for Saul Williams at Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. She is a BAWP Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, has worked and read with the late Amiri Baraka via EastSide Arts Alliance, and is one of the co-founders of the Black Writers Conference in Otisville, New York. Synchronicity: The Oracle of Sun Medicine (Nomadic Press, 2020) is her first full-length collection of poetry.

Salma Salama

Ecuadorian-American writer. Salma Salama is an Iowa Writers’ House 2020 Bicultural Writing Fellow to be published in We the Interwoven Volume Three. She was born in Sudan and currently lives in Iowa City, Iowa. Salma works as a caretaker at Reach for Potential. She is a mother of one and a grandmother of three. Her work with BIWF will explore her life and journey to Iowa. Her goal is to educate her readers about Sudan and its history.

Eyad Said

Eyad Said is an Iowa Writers’ House 2020 Bicultural Writing Fellow to be published in We the Interwoven Volume Three. He was born in Damascus, Syria and now lives with his family in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. A husband and a father of two kids, he is an assistant professor of mathematics in Mount Mercy University. Eyad hopes that through the fellowship he will be able explore the wounds caused by the terrible tragedies that took place in his country. He wants to be able to tell more Syrian stories to the people of Iowa.

Becca Klaver

Becca Klaver is a writer, teacher, editor, scholar, and literary collaboration conjurer. She is the author of the poetry collections LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010), Empire Wasted (Bloof Books, 2016), and Ready for the World (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), as well as several chapbooks. A founding editor of the feminist poetry press Switchback Books, she is currently co-editing, with Arielle Greenberg, the digital poetry anthology Electric Gurlesque. Born and raised in Milwaukee, and educated at the University of Southern California (BA), Columbia College Chicago (MFA), and Rutgers University (PhD), she is the Robert P. Dana Director of the Center for the Literary Arts at Cornell College and lives in Iowa City.