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Writing as World Citizenship, a panel reading at Cowles Library

On Oct. 9, the Drake University English Department will host a panel reading titled “Being a Writer in the World: Writing as World Citizenship,” at 3:30 p.m. in Cowles Library Reading Room, 2725 University Ave.

Four guests from the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa will lead the event, which is free and open to the public:

Karim Alrawi (playwright, fiction writer; Canada/U.K./Egypt) writes stage plays in both Arabic and English. He is also the author of several radio and TV plays, and children’s books. Additionally, he was resident writer at the Royal Court Theatre and the Theatre Royal Stratford East in England, has held writing residencies in the U.S. and Canada, and teaching positions at universities in all three countries. His national and international honors include the John Whiting Award and the Samuel Becket Award. Karim’s participation in this event is courtesy of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Arts Council of British Columbia.

Shandana Minhas (fiction writer; Pakistan) has been a columnist, a teacher, an actress, a screenwriter, a playwright, and more. Her novel Tunnel Vision (2007) was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book; a second title Survival Tips For Lunatics, for young readers, will be published in 2014. Minhas is currently working on a collection of short stories and another novel. Her participation is courtesy of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.

Mahsa Mohebali (fiction writer; Iran) is the author of the short story collections The Voices (1998) and Love-making in Footnotes (2004), the latter a winner of the Golshiri Foundation’s award for best short story collection. She has also written two novels, The Grey Spell (2002) and Don’t Worry (2008), which won both the Golshiri Foundation’s and the Press Critics’ Best Novel award. Her work has been translated into Swedish, published widely in print and online, and performed on stages across Iran.

Tong Wei Ger (fiction writer, playwright; Taiwan) is the author of the short story collection Wang Kao (2002), and the novels, The Age of No Hurt (2005), and Northwest Rain (2010), for which he won the Taiwan Literature Prize. He lectures in the Department of Theatre Arts of the Taipei National University of the Arts. His participation was made possible by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture.

This event is sponsored by the Susan Glaspell Writers & Critics Reading Series, The Principal Financial Group Center for Global Citizenship, and the Drake University Center for the Humanities. For more information, contact Carol Spaulding-Kruse at carol.spaulding@drake.edu or 515-271-3969.