As part of the Iowa City Book Festival, Ana Merino, Horacio Castellanos Moya and Luis Muñoz, faculty in the University of Iowa MFA in Spanish Creative Writing program, read from their work in Spanish. Printed English translations were also available for purchase. The reading was followed by tapas from Devotay, served in the Prairie Lights Café.

Horacio Castellanos Moya presented the annual Paul Engle Memorial Reading on October 12, 2010. Moya was the 2010 Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor. The Engle reading honors the memory of visionary Iowa poet Paul Engle, who led the Iowa Writers’ Workshop to prominence and co-founded the IWP.

The Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professorships Program was established in 1978-79 based on a bequest from the late Ida Beam of Vinton, Iowa, who willed her family farm to the UI Foundation. The proceeds from the farm’s sale enabled the UI to establish a fund that brings top scholars in a variety of fields to the university for lectures and discussions.

Luis Humberto Crosthwaite and Horacio Castellanos Moya read from their work in a special event held in conjunction with the University of Iowa Department of Spanish and Portuguese on September 7, 2011.

In this On the Fly interview—conducted in October 2010 when Horacio Castellanos Moya was in Iowa City to participate in programs sponsored by the University of Iowa International Writing Program—Castellanos explains his strategy for making sure he is full of ideas when he gets up in the morning to write: He keeps quiet at night. If he doesn’t, he explains, “The next morning I feel a little bit empty.”

That said, he attests to his adaptability as a writer. Speaking of his tendency to move from place to place, he says, “I am used to adapt(ing) myself to the conditions that I get. In different levels, that’s my understanding of life. I get what life gives me and I try to adapt to that.”

While he speaks of his nomadic life in this interview—born in Honduras, raised in El Salvador, and having spent time in Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Germany, Japan, and the United States, he currently is an assistant professor in the University of Iowa’s Spanish & Portuguese program.