Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

I have spent forty years in the basin of the Upper Iowa, a stream that winds from the flat farm fields of southern Minnesota through the wooded valleys of northeastern Iowa to the Mississippi. As a child I fished and swam in the river. As an adult I cross the river every day. My office overlooks the river, winding out of sight in two directions; with my windows open on warm days, I hear the raspy crowing of pheasant cocks in tall grasses along the river’s bank. On the map, the Upper Iowa is a blue line that, together with the crossing of two state highways, explains the position of the town I call home.   

David S. Faldet, Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People

Iowa City Book Festival: featuring books from Agate Publishing

The Iowa City Book Festival is just a few weeks away! We're looking forward to getting to talk with our incredible friends and meeting new people. Come find us at our table, where we'll be selling books from our press and other presses across the Midwest. It's our pleasure to announce that Agate Publishing will be bringing these titles:

• Locally Grown: Portraits of Artisanal Farms from America's Heartland, by Anna Blessing

• Freeman, by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

• Long Division, by Kiese Laymon

• How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, by Kiese Laymon

• Where the Line Bleeds, by Jesmyn Ward

We're excited to dig into these books, and we hope you are too! We'll have our table up on October 12 from 10:00 AM–5:00 PM. You can join our Facebook event here.

Keep checking back for more posts about Agate Publishing's books!

Iowa vs Iowa State Photo from 1919

In Iowa City, the Cyclones and the Hawkeyes clash on the gridiron; postcards probably sold well each year to alumni and students on the winning side. 

Was This Heaven?: A Self-Portrait of Iowa on Early Postcards by Lyell D. Henry, Jr. 

Iowa City Book Festival: featuring FREEMAN by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Clear your schedules for the Iowa City Book Festival October 10-13!

Stop by the University of Iowa Press table on October 12 to pick up Freeman, by Leonard Pitts, Jr., from Agate Publishing! Freeman is written by a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist and earned a Publishers Weekly starred review. It tells the post–Civil War love story of a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army.

Praise for Freeman
"[A] uniquely American epic . . . Freeman is an important addition to the literature of slavery and the Civil War, by a knowledgable, compassionate, and relentlessly truthful writer determined to explore both enslavement in all its malignancy and also what it truly means to be free."--Howard Frank Mosher,  Washington Post

George Olson + J. Crew = match made in prairie heaven

Looking for an awesome t-shirt for this fall? Check out J. Crew's High Line Butterfly Weed Tee!

http://www.jcrew.com/womens_category/knitstees/shortsleevetees/PRDOVR~05252/ENE~1+2+3+22+4294967294+20~~~0~15~all~mode+matchallany~~~~~butterfly%20week/05252.jsp?isSaleItem=false

Raptor of the Week: Northern Hawk Owl

Northern Hawk Owl
Surnia ulula

This is an accidental visitor to Iowa, with only two accepted records, one from Black Hawk County in 1981 and 1982 and one from Worth County in 2004 and 2005. As its name implies, its general shape and perching attitude are somewhat hawklike.

The Raptors of Iowa, paintings by James F. Landenberger