Fiction with an Iowa City Setting: An Annotated Checklist

Abstract

Iowa City and The University of Iowa have been home for many writers. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which will celebrate its fiftieth reunion in May, and the International Writing Program are at present the best-known cultivators of creative writing on the University campus. But student publications, especially the Iowa Literary Magazine, 1924-30, and the encouragement of writers by the Department of English are traditions that began much earlier. Students, professors, and visitors have sometimes turned to the local scene for their subjects. Many works, therefore, fall into the category of academic novels, primarily about students or professors. Published studies and bibliographies of academic novels list several UI novels and provide a context for them.1 The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, which form a large part of the Iowa City community, have also provided subjects for novelists. Athletics is becoming a new topic for local literary exploration. Many of these novels bring out-of-state visitors to the University or the city, giving their writers an opportunity to comment on local character­ istics or problems. In many of the novels of the sixties and later decades, several patterns can be discerned. Counterculture sexual behavior, drugs, student demonstrations, avaricious landlords, farmhouses, and Volkswagens can be anticipated as almost a set formula. The downtown Iowa City urban renewal project continues to be severely criticized, both for the closing of Donnelly’s Bar, which is sometimes disguised under other names, and for the alleged poor architectural quality of the new buildings. Several writers who refer to Meredith Willson, author of The