SUMMER INSTITUTE ONLINE PRE-PROGRAM 2 0 2 0 - 2 1
CONTENTS Program ......................................02 Staff.............................................04 Mentors .......................................05 Participants..................................16 Monthly Overview.......................18
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The Summer Institute An immersive, two-week creative writing and cultural exchange program held in Iowa City, Iowa, US, a UNESCO City of Literature, for participants age 18-22 from Pakistan, India, and the US. The SI's innovative, inclusive, crosscultural approach will empower future thought-leaders and help forge new lines of understanding, promote social justice, and foreground diversity, empathy, and community. Participants will come to see writing as a form of action–a personally-empowering skill that can be employed for social change.
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Online Pre-Program In response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the IWP created the preprogram to bridge SI participants selected in 2020 to the in-person experience in Iowa City in the summer of 2021. Designed with intentionality and flexibility, the 10month pre-program is offered in a mostly asynchronous “menu” form, in which participants choose how they will engage. Each month, participants have a new menu of six curricular elements: pre-recorded lectures discussing the month’s theme and learning goals, selected readings to expand learning, writing prompts to practice writing skills and new literary forms, one-on-one connections with Mentors to discuss craft and gain insights from accomplished authors, small writing groups to learn from and write with peers, and social media engagement to build community with each other, 2019 alums, and the SI team. SUMMER INSTITUTE
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Staff
Program Coordinator Peter Gerlach is Summer Institute Coordinator at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He received his BA and MA degrees in English from Ripon College and the University of Northern Colorado, respectively. After serving in the US Peace Corps in Mongolia, he earned a PhD in Cultural Foundations of Education from Syracuse University. Since 2004, he has taught a variety of university-level courses in both English and Education departments. Dr. Gerlach’s dissertation, current teaching, and research interests focus on the merits and limits of global citizenship, the need for understanding and empathy across cultures, the internationalization of higher education, and the lived experiences of university students in a globalized world.
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Program Assistant Sharaf Zia received his B.Sc in Economics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. He has a MA in Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University and is a 2019 graduate in Fiction from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Mentors Chandrahas Choudhury is the author of three novels: Clouds (2019), Days of My China Dragon (2019), and Arzee the Dwarf (2013), and the editor of India: A Traveler's Literary Companion (2010). He has written essays, reportage, and literary criticism for the Wall Street Journal, CondĂŠ Nast Traveler, the Washington Post, and Mint, and lectures widely on writing, and the Indian novel.
Anam Zakaria is the author of 1971: A People's History from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India (2019), Between the Great Divide: A Journey into Pakistan-administered Kashmir (2018) and The Footprints of Partition: Narratives of Four Generations of Pakistanis and Indians (2015), which won her the 2017 KLF-German Peace Prize. Anam has previously worked as a director at The Citizens Archive of Pakistan, collecting oral histories from the Partition generation and religious minorities of Pakistan, and connecting thousands of students in India and Pakistan through a cultural exchange program. She continues this line of work as an independent oral historian and cultural facilitator.
Dini Parayitam has an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa’s Writers' Workshop. Her short fiction has been published in The Iowa Review, Boston Review, and BOMB Magazine, among other places. She was an Emerging Writing Fellow at Yale-NUS College (Singapore) and a KALAKARS (NYC) Fellow for Scriptwriting. She is working on her debut novel in Austin, Texas.
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Participants Minahil is a writer from Lahore, Pakistan. She prefers to write fiction, nonfiction and poetry.Her writings deal with trauma, oppression, love, and belonging. Her poems have been published in Outcast Magazine, and The World That Belongs To Us: An Anthology of Queer Poetry from South Asia. She is one of the eight winners of the LUMS Young Writers’ Short Story Contest. Minahil Abideen
Umar is an undergraduate student from Karachi, Pakistan currently studying at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He writes Urdu poetry and short stories on a variety of themes including spirituality, social justice, and love.
Umar Abuzar Zain is a resident of Lahore, Pakistan. He is a Sophomore at the National College of Arts, Lahore. He enjoys descriptive prose but would like to explore poetry and fiction as well. His writings revolve around the theme of man vs. himself or man vs. nature and wants to broaden the range of themes he wants to explore Zain Ahmad
Qazi is an inhabitant of Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. He writes poetry, short stories, and novels. His writing explores what it means to have a self and a soul. He is the author of three books on Amazon and Goodreads: Soul Shadow, Human Flora, and The Triangle. Qazi Akash Ahmad
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Participants
Irram was born in Srinagar, Kashmir. She lives in Srinagar with her parents and two elder siblings. She is currently enrolled as a third year student in English Language and Literature. She writes fiction and the occasional non-fiction. The main themes of her writing include democracy, freedom, friendship and love. She is inspired by Virginia Woolf's concept of the "androgynous mind" and would love to write a feminist text around this idea Irram Andrabi
Junaid is from Pulwama, Kashmir. He is a currently a Civil Engineering Junior at the Vellore Institute of Technology in Tamil Nadu. He writes both fiction and poetry and his writing is highly influenced by the struggle of the people of Kashmir. Junaid Bhat
Ellora Bultema
Ellora was born in Anhui, China and grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They attended Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa as a recipient of the 2016 Williston Jones Full-Tuition Diversity Leadership Scholarship and earned a BA in business administration, creative writing, and Asian studies while pursuing a minor in economics. During their time at Coe they focused on playwriting and their thesis project was a full-length play titled A Teacup Moon. They have also been published in literary magazines such as The Pearl and Coe Review.
Kritika lives in Noida, India. She prefers writing prose, short stories, and craft essays. Lately, she has also been writing poetry. The major thematic concerns of her writing and literary interests revolve around socio-political aspects of identity, belongingness, wounded-ness, and empathy. She is a creative columnist at Jabberwock Online, and works as a writer and editor for her college’s annual print magazine
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Participants
Samuel is from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He enjoys history and writing essays. He is particularly interested in the local histories of the places he has lived in. This past year, he completed his honors thesis which was written over the change in organizational structure of The Emma Goldman Clinic (one of the first feminist clinics in the country to offer abortions after Roe v Wade). Samuel Eck
Ifrah lives in Islamabad, Pakistan. She prefers to write young adult fiction, fantasy and women’s fiction. She won a silver medal in the HRCA 6th International children’s painting and essay writing competition in 2015 and secured 3rd position in Pakistan in the CEATS English linguistic contest in 2016.
Ifrah Fahim Maya lives just outside Madikeri, Coorg, in the Western Ghats of southern India. Since she has grown up in this forested environment with its unique shola-grassland ecosystem, her writing tends to focus on the natural world. She is interested in both fiction and non-fiction, and wants to explore themes of time, consciousness, memory and affect. Maya Goel Sophie Kim is a queer Korean-American slam poet, playwright, and filmmaker from Los Angeles, California, USA. Kim is the author of SING THE BIRDS HOME (Penmanship Books, 2019) and served as the 2018-19 Los Angeles County Youth Poet Laureate. Kim is a Lambda Literary Fellow in playwrighting; an alum of the Iowa Young Writers' Studio, the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop, and Winter Tangerine workshops; and will participate in The Adroit Journal 2020 Summer Mentorship Program in Poetry. Kim enjoys writing sad gay poems.
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Participants
Diya hails from Kannur, Kerala. She is a Freshman at Ashoka University. Most of her work treads on failures of language, belonging, and assimilation. She writes creative non-fiction, romance, coming-ofage and Kafkaesque stories. Diya Isha Osahon is a Nigerian-American writer shuttling between Edo, Nigeria and Maryland, USA. He is a writer of speculative literary fiction. Some of his literary interests include concepts such as cultural roots/ ancestry, inter-generational trauma and bias, as well as as superstition and faith, which he hopes to explore in his work. He has been published in magazines such as Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Omenana.
Moachiba Jamir
Osahon Ize-Iyamu
Moachiba is currently pursuing his Bachelor degree in English from The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, in India. He hails from Nagaland, India and likes experimenting with different genres and literary themes. He is drawn towards magical realism and fantasy and would like to incorporate them into his writing. His literary interests center around the socio-economic and political conditions of Nagas (The native inhabitants of Nagaland).
Talha is a student from Lahore, Pakistan. He is studying to be an accountant. On his good days, he approaches the question of money differently by attempting to capture the middle class experiences of the city. While he enjoys sci-fi, his own writings deal with a broader range of genres. Talha Khalid SUMMER INSTITUTE
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Participants
Hunaina is from Karachi, Pakistan. She is a sophomore at Habib University and writes fiction and poetry. She is interested in incorporating the theme of representation, gender, queer theory and psychoanalysis. Hunaina Khan Nidhi is a student and writer from Pune, India. She has been pursuing an undergraduate degree in English from St Stephen’s College in Delhi and is fond of writing poetry and drama. She talks about queerness, womanhood and gender in her work, and hopes to write feminist comedies in the future. Her work has been featured in The Bangalore Review, Mad Swirl and Scroll India. Nidhi Krishna
Yamini is a writer from Pune, India and studies English and Creative Writing at Ashoka University. She finds herself writing about things like girlhood, youth, friendship, and nature. She's been published in Vayavya Magazine and the On Reclaiming Shame Anthology.
Yamini Krishnan Abhiram Kuchibhotla hails from Hyderabad and is currently living in the state of Gujarat. He is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree at the Manipal Centre for Humanities, and enjoys writing short stories drawn from the web of Indian society. He likes to tiptoe the line between fiction and non-fiction. Abhiram Kuchibhotla
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Participants
Azurite, a Junior at Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. She writes poetry and experimental prose and finds herself drawn to themes of liminality, chaos, and intuition. Azurite Montgomery Lindsay is from Baytown, Texas in the United States of America, but recently graduated Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She prefers to write poetry, flash fiction, and plays, but is always interested in expanding the genres she engages with. The primary themes of her work are complicated relationships characters find themselves in and the role that race plays in those relationships. She has been published in the Trinity Review.
Lindsay Morgan
Chirodip was born in Comilla, a small city in Bangladesh. He prefers to write fiction, especially historical fiction. Currently, he is interested in the 1971 Bangladesh- Pakistan war and would like to write on this theme. He is currently working on a novella.
Chirodip Naha
Eiman is from Lahore, Pakistan. She prefers narrative writing, short stories, memoirs, and essays. She writes about whatever inspires her in the moment. In her writing, she wants to explore human pain and ideas of justice. Eiman Nasir
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Participants
Ali is from Takht-i-Bahi, Mardan, Pakistan. He is currently finishing his last semester of a BS in English. He writes about existential, social, and intimate settings. His work has been published in Writer's Revival and he has received a prize from the Governer of KPK for coming first in an Essay Writing Competition. Ali Raza Luke is from Iowa City, Iowa. He loves to write contemporary and literary pieces centered around queer identity and self-discovery. He writes primarily for teen and adult audiences. He also writes reviews on his blog, Naturally Flavored Animal. His piece 'Leo Flores' was published in Coe College's literary magazine Coe Review. The story was also selected for 2019's Mission Creek Festival. Luke Reynolds
Jeiliany was born in ManatĂ, but lives in Ciales, Puerto Rico. She is a student at the University of Puerto Rico-Arecibo. As a writer, she likes writing poetry and fiction. Her works often develop into romance stories or intense longing directed towards finding oneself. Jeiliany Rodriguez Loretta is a short fiction writer from McAllen, Texas, a small city on the Mexican-American border. Through her writing, she explores the ever-changing perception of our memories and its effects on the way we move through the present. Her publications include 'La Tua Mamma' in High Noon Literary Magazine (2019) and 'Marie (an excerpt)' in Trinity Magazine (2020). In 2019, she was awarded Trinity University’s June Cook Scholarship for Creative Writing.
Loretta Rodriguez
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Participants
Ayesha lives in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. She aspires to be a poet and a short-story writer. She is a graduate of Fatima Jinnah Women University, where she studied Electronic Engineering. She likes to write about tragedy. The main themes of her work are ‘Coming of age’ and ‘Individual vs. Society’. Ayesha Sadiqa Shanza lives in Karachi, Pakistan. The main themes of her work are transgenerational trauma, mental health, and navigating love in a society that considers it taboo. She wrote a feature in The Index Newspaper released by the Oshkosh West High School (Wisconsin) in October 2015 and I’ve been published several times as a child for poems and letters to the editor in Young World by Dawn. Shanza Sarfaraz
Fatima is from Karachi, Pakistan. She is interested in literary realism and coming-of-age/Bildungsroman fiction. She likes to explore themes of female identity, more specifically, the South Asian Muslim woman’s experience in her fiction. She received the Kensett prize for distinction in O-Level English Language and Literature at the Karachi Grammar School. Fatima Sajjad
Himangi Shekhawat
Himangi is a poetry enthusiast and writer from Jaipur, India. She lives in New Delhi and is a student of English Literature at the Lady Shri Ram College for Women. Through her work, she attempts to explore the universality of human emotion by drawing on her own experiences and her responses to them, and by placing them in the context of the collective human experience. Her monthly column can be found on Jabberwock Online, and her poetry will be featured in an upcoming anthology in the Literati Magazine. SUMMER INSTITUTE
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Participants Tanya is a young queer essayist, poet, editor & teaching artist navigating life as a transgender enby in India. Their work has appeared in Gone Lawn, Rust+Moth, Polyphony H.S, and elsewhere, and has been recognized by the Timothy Corsellis Prize, the Times of India and Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Student Contest, among others. They are the author of Heaven is Only a Part of Our Body Where All the Sickness Resides (Ghost City Press, 2018). Their chapbook This is Warning: I’m Too Tall to be Touched by Grace is forthcoming in 2021. Tanya is currently studying Philosophy and English at Miranda House, University of Delhi. They are deeply inspired by the Transformative Justice movements and the politics of indispensability.
Tanya Singh
Megan is from Ramsey, Minnesota. She writes poetry and fiction, but relishes shorter and longer works alike. With her additional interest in and focus on Environmental Science, she often finds that the natural world figures significantly within her writing. Her work has previously been published in the University of Minnesota Morris's literary journal, Floating World. Megan Steblay Shehzor was born in Hyderabad, India. He enjoys writing speculative fiction that takes its cues from magical realism and works with streamof-consciousness. He also writes poetry and songs. In 2018, he won a gold certificate in the Commonwealth Essay Competition.
Shehzor Syed Meena is from Lincoln, Nebraska USA, a Junior at the University of Washington. She writes short stories focused on the Young Adult and New Adult genres and on themes of family and womanhood. She is currently trying to write Fantasy as well.
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Participants Tiana grew up in the small town of Sumter, South Carolina. She writes fiction, primarily, but has also dabbled in poetry and creative nonfiction as well. Her short stories fall into the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. During her time at Claflin University, she has been published in Claflin’s Edisto River Review twice. Tiana Wilder
Sidney Wollmuth
Sidney grew up in Sterling, Virginia in the United States. She tends to write poetry when she’s emotional and fiction when she’s rational and hopes to finish a young adult novel in the near future. She likes to focus her work on mental illness, pop culture, and the tiny details that make us human. Her work has been published in The Huffington Post, Rookie Mag, and Sad Girl Review. She has been awarded a gold and silver medal in the Scholastic Art and Writing awards.
Shigraf is from Daltonganj, a small town in Jharkhand, India. A Junior at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, she writes literary fiction and is interested in the themes of conflict, religion, Muslim life in India, and philosophy. Shigraf Zahbi
Anita is a writer and artist from Karachi, Pakistan. She is pursuing a degree in communication and design with a minor in literature at Habib University. She likes blending contemporary romance with magical realism in her work. Anita Zehra
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Participants Mahnoor is a writer from Islamabad, Pakistan. She is a Sophomore at the National University of Science and Technology, Islamabad. She writes dystopian fiction and fantasy and, occasionally, argumentative or opinion essays. The themes of her writing are social commentary, romanticism, and escapism. Mahnoor Zubair
*** A committee of IWP staff, novelists, poets, and playwrights came together in March 2020 to select, from a pool of over 1,100 applicants, these 41 most outstanding writers from Pakistan, India, and the US.
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Monthly Overview June: Introduction In the opening month, we familiarize participants with the International Writing Program and orient them to the Summer Institute, in both in-person and online formats. Participants meet and get to know the cohort (and SI staff and 2019 alumni) through the pre-program’s six elements.
July: Foundations This month is designed to give participants a sense of the varieties of pleasures that are available in reading literary fiction. The prompts are designed to get participants started with smaller writing projects until they are ready to begin work on their own ideas.
August: Our Global Community The third month centers on notions of community small and large, local and global. We ask, what is community? Who is your community? We explore the concept of “global citizenship� and the extent to which it is even possible or desirable. And we discuss the Summer Institute, as a community and as a global community of writers.
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September: Good Writers as Good Readers The fourth month focuses more heavily on close reading. Participants get a sense of what it means to closely read, evaluate, and dissect a work of difficult fiction. The prompts are designed to a) keep them in the habit of writing and b) encourage them to read more closely.
October: The Short Form In the fifth month, we discuss short stories exclusively. Dedicated to the form, we read short stories, take them apart at sentence and paragraph level, and see how they have been put together. Writing prompts again are designed to keep participants in the habit of writing and to encourage them to experiment with their own short stories.
November: Empathy This month, we explore empathy and its limits. Writing prompts focus on nations and on individuals and get participants to think about (their/our) assumptions, stereotypes, and master narratives. What is the place of empathy in the Summer Institute and between them all, its diverse participants?
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December: Writing the Colonies Since participants are writing almost exclusively in English, they think this month about why it is they choose—if they do—to explore their world through English when a lot of them, especially the South Asian students, do not use the language as a primary, daily mode of communication.
January: Writing Your Community In the eighth month, we want participants to think of writers not just as solitary beings, but as barometers of communal sensibilities and preoccupations. We encourage participants— again, but differently this time—to identify and define who makes up their community and how. Our goal is to encourage participants to think about what it means to engage with one’s community responsibly as a creative writer.
February: Writing the Domestic Most fiction that comes out of South Asia or the South Asian diaspora in the US falls under domestic literary fiction, and so it is prudent to dedicate a month to understanding the tradition of domestic realism. Our hope is that by the end of this module, participants have a richer sense of the tradition that their stories are adding to, should they choose to write domestic realism.
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March: Leadership Finally, we explore how the pre-program has shaped participants and they it. Participants are asked to see themselves as leaders, whether through the written form and/or more broadly—and perhaps even as agents of social change. What kind of leader are they? Do they want to be? Will they be? And, of course, we look ahead to what comes next: them, in the Summer Institute in Iowa City!
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