issue featured winners of the last
Sharlet Award for writing by veterans.
The Iowa Review continues to give veteran writers a platform for their work, with a new Veterans’ Writing Gallery and Veterans’ Artist Gallery on the literary magazine's website. During the week leading up to Veterans Day on Nov. 11, the magazine plans to share past poems, stories, essays, and interviews each day.
In 2016, The Iowa Review received a $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Art Works grant to support veterans’ writing. The funding allowed for expansion of The Iowa Review’s Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans, a biennial creative writing contest open to U.S. military veterans and active-duty service members.
The Veterans’ Writing Gallery includes information about the Sharlet Award, which began in 2012 with the sponsorship of the family of Vietnam War veteran and antiwar writer and activist Jeff Sharlet. NEA funding allowed the magazine to eliminate content submission fees. The magazine was also able to more widely publicize the contest among potential entrants, ultimately garnering 459 submissions for the 2016 contest.
In addition to continuing to distribute of winners’ work both in print and online, The Iowa Review was able to increase the number of cash awards given out, with $1000 for first place, $750 for second, and $500 for three runners up. Lastly, the funding allowed for a new, small honorarium for a guest judge. The 2016 contest was judged by Phil Klay, who won the National Book Award for Redeployment, a short story collection.
Along with award information, the Veterans’ Writing Gallery includes a print archive, interviews with veteran writers, and writing resources for veterans.
The Veterans’ Artist Gallery features visual art projects. In one of the featured series, Paper Dolls: Stories of Women Who Served, artist Annemaree Rae uses accurate depictions of U.S. military uniforms to create handmade outfits on two-dimensional paper figures. The series, done in collaboration with artist Pam DeLuco and Shotwell Paper Mill, was featured in the Huffington Post in 2013.
Visit the Veterans' Writing Gallery in the days leading up to Veterans Day to view different featured works every day.
The Iowa Review is based in the Department of English, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. It publishes three print issues per year featuring poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction. More information about The Iowa Review, including how to subscribe, purchase individual issues, or find the current issue in a bookstore, can be found at www.iowareview.org.