The 2008 Iowa Studies Forum
A Celebration of Iowa’s History, Science, Politics, Literature, & Art

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

Stephen G. Bloom
stephen-g-bloom@uiowa.edu

Stephen G. Bloom began his writing career as a journalist for The Los Angeles Times and Dallas Morning News. His critically acclaimed book Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America was a Book-of-the-Month Club and Quality Paperbacks Book Club selection, and was named a Best Book of the Year by MS-NBC, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Rocky Mountain News, and Denver Post. Bloom is also the author of Inside the Writer’s Mind: Writing Narrative Journalism, a collection of his essays.

Bloom’s latest book, a collaborative effort with photographer Peter Feldstein, is The Oxford Project, to be published this fall by Welcome Books. The Oxford Project intimately examines the lives of 100 residents of the Johnson County city of Oxford, probing how the rural community has evolved over the last 25 years. The Oxford Project was exhibited at the Des Moines Art Center last year, and exhibitions of the project are scheduled for Italy and China next year.

Bloom is also writing a nonfiction global detective story about pearls, entitled Tears of Mermaids, to be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2009.

Since 1993, Bloom has taught narrative journalism at the University of Iowa.

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