Please join us for our annual IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series! This week’s event features IWP Residents Tomás Downey (Argentina), Hyukin Michaela Kwon (South Korea), and Tayi Tibble (New Zealand). They will be accompanied by University of Iowa MFA Candidate in Literary Translation, Fion Tse.
Tomás Downey (fiction writer, translator, screenwriter; Argentina) is the author of three short story collections and a novel. His first book to be translated into English, Diving Board, will be released in October 2025. He is the winner of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes prize for a short story collection and the María Elena Walsh Foundation literary prize, among others, and the recipient of grants from the Fondo Nacional de las Artes and Übersetzerhaus Looren. He is currently working on his second novel, Coma. His participation is made possible thanks to the generous support of Hugh F. Culverhouse, Jr. and other donations made to the International Writing Program.
Hyukin Michaela Kwon 권혁인 (playwright, screenwriter, theatre and film director; South Korea) has written and directed a competition-winning multimedia musical and several short films in multiple languages. She won the 2023 BBC International Playwriting Competition, and her winning play Steady Eyes was produced by BBC Studios Audio and broadcast on the BBC World Service in 2024. She was the scriptwriter/director representing Korea for the ASEAN-ROK Independent Cinema Project. She recently completed a stage play exploring Korea’s social rigidity and is currently developing a new play on the realities of a super-ageing society and a ovel centred on self-acceptance. Her participation is made possible by a grant from Arts Council Korea (ARKO).
Tayi Tibble (poet, nonfiction writer; Aoteatroa/New Zealand) is the author of two poetry collections, Rangikura (2024) and Poukahangatus (2022). She won The Best First Book of Poetry Award at the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book awards and is the 2024 winner of the Poetry Foundation’s Bess Hoskin Prize. She is currently working on a discontinuous novel and poetry collection about the ocean. Her participation is made possible by a grant from Creative New Zealand.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Fion Tse translates between Chinese (Cantonese/Mandarin) and English. She studied Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages & Civilizations at the University of Chicago, and is now pursuing an MFA in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa as an Iowa Arts Fellow.
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