Luther College Writers Festival 2013

Intersections Between Word and Image

University of Northern Iowa graphic design professor Roy R. Behrens will be among the presenters at the 2013 Luther College Writers Festival in Decorah IA on Saturday, September 28. He will appear on a panel on New Writing, New Media (3:00-5:00 pm), and will talk about "Intersections Between Word and Image." Beginning in the 1970s, as a designer/illustrator, he collaborated with various American writers, including Jerzy Kosinski, Guy Davenport, Marvin Bell and others.

Block of Stamps | Amber Wessels

Synergistic Block of Stamps (2013) © Amber Wessels

Above Synergistic block of stamps on the theme of Art Deco Miami, by graphic design student Amber Wessels (2013) at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Rabbi David Aaron in Endless Light: The Ancient Path of the Kabbalah. Berkeley Trade, 1998—

One man who came to me for advice because he was contemplating a divorce told me mournfully why he thought the marriage went wrong. He said, "I know what my problem was. I was looking for a Ferrari and I got a Ford." I said, "I think the problem was you were looking for a car."

Promotional Poster | Elizabeth Philipp

Promotional poster (2013) © Elizabeth Philipp

Above Proposed promotional poster for the College of Humanities, Arts and Sciences (CHAS) at the University of Northern Iowa, by graphic design student Elizabeth Philipp (2013).

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Eudora Welty in (her autobiography) One Writer's Beginnings. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1984, p. 10—

At around age six, perhaps, I was standing by myself in our front yard waiting for supper, just at that hour in a late summer day when the sun is already below the horizon and the risen full moon in the visible sky stops being chalky and begins to take on light. There comes the moment, and I saw it then, when the moon goes from flat to round. For the first time it met my eyes as a globe. The word "moon" came into my mouth as though fed to me out of a silver spoon. Held in my mouth the moon became a word. It had the roundness of a Concord grape Grandpa took off his vine and gave me to suck out of its skin and swallow whole, in Ohio. 

Lincoln Assassination | Melanie Walde

Above Info graphic about the assassination of US President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, by Melanie Walde, a graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa. Copyright © by Melanie Walde 2013.

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Joseph Epstein in A Line Out for a Walk. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991—

When I began teaching I worried gravely about being able to fill a fifty-minute class; now, a decade or so later, I have been known to run over when teaching a two-and-a-half-hour class. Whence did this extra steam and stamina derive? From my own ever-expanding wisdom and ever-increasing powers of intellectual penetration? How nice to be able to think so, which I for a moment don't. More likely a leak has been sprung in my modesty. In what kind of work other than teaching can one rattle on at such prodigious length without fear of being told, mate, stow it? Some of the most interesting people I know are professors, but so also are some of the most profound bores.

Collections & Recollections | Jessica McDowell

Above Promotional poster for a hypothetical exhibition called Collections and Recollections: Arrangements of Related Forms, designed by Jessica McDowell, graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa. Copyright © 2013 by Jessica McDowell.

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Stanley Elkin, quoted in George Plimpton, ed., The Writer's Chapbook. New York: Viking, 19189, p. 128—

My editor at Random House used to tell me, "Stanley, less is more." I had to fight him tooth and nail in the better restaurants to maintain excess because I don't believe that less is more. I believe that more is more. I believe that less is less, fat fat, thin thin and enough is enough. There's a famous exchange between [F. Scott] Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe in which Fitzgerald criticizes Wolfe for one of his novels. Fitzgerald tells him that [Gustave] Flaubert believed in the mot précis and that there are two kinds of writers—the putter-inners and the taker-outers. Wolfe, who probably was not as good a writer as Fitzgerald but evidently wrote a better letter, said, "Flaubert me no Flauberts. Shakespeare was a putter-inner, Melville was a putter-inner." I can't remember who else was a putter-inner, but I'd rather be a putter-inner than a taker-outer.