The well-known Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City, IA recently hosted Dr. Philip Mosley, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Penn State Worthington Scranton, who read from his 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize, short-listed translation of Francois Jacqmin's The Book of the Snow.
Since his translation of The Book of the Snow was published in late 2010, Dr. Mosley has been conducting readings from the work at regional, state, and national locales. He traveled to Prairie Lights at the invitation of the bookstore's co-owner and poet Jan Weissmiller.
Dr. Mosley's reading was streamed live on the internet and is archived by the Iowa Digital Library. To access this audio recording, go to http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu and follow the links to Arts and Literature, the Virtual Writing University Archive, and Live from Prairie Lights.
While in Iowa, Dr. Mosley was also a three-day guest of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa as it celebrates its 40th birthday. In its time this program has played host to over 1,000 writers from 120 countries.
He attended a panel on literary translation and a graduate translation class that included creative writing students from the celebrated Iowa Writers Workshop. He also attended readings by two short story writers from South Korea and a poet from Japan.
Named after the celebrated City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, Prairie Lights was founded in 1978 by Jim Harris and has been named one of the top ten independent bookstores in the country. Many famous authors have held events there, and President Obama was a recent visitor.
A video recording of Dr. Mosley's Griffin Prize reading in Toronto in May is available at www.griffinpoetryprize.com with a link to "See and Hear Poetry."
