VOL.95/2026.06

 

[New Ways of Walking Through Cities ⑪]

The Land Where Grain and Words Grow: Iowa

 

2025.11.03

 

 

The State of Iowa, located in the midwestern part of the US, might be unfamiliar to most Koreans, but it is one of the most critical regions for American agriculture. Iowa is both the heart of the “Corn Belt” - known for its vast cornfields - and one of the main pillars of the “Grain Belt,” which is responsible for much of the nation’s crop production. Iowa is one of the few regions where the Corn Belt and the Grain Belt overlap. Anyone visiting Iowa for the first time would be astonished by the vastness of its farmland - so immense that even after driving for hours, you would see no end to it.
The population of Iowa steadily increased from the late 19th to the early 20th century with the influx of agricultural immigrants, but urbanization later brought it to a standstill; today, about 3.3 million people live in the state. As of 2025, the population density stands at roughly 22 people per square kilometer - low enough to give rise to the saying that “there are more pigs than people.” Yet from August to mid-November each year, Iowa becomes lively again. The reason is the International Writing Program (IWP), held at the University of Iowa. This program invites writers from around the world to communicate through literature and supports their creative work. Since its founding in 1967, the IWP has hosted more than 1,600 writers from over 160 countries. Writers from various genres - poetry, fiction, playwriting, criticism, and non-fiction - along with students at the University of Iowa and local residents of Iowa, share world literature and culture through readings, stage performances, and film screenings throughout the program. Thanks to this, Iowa City, located about four hours from the nearest major city, was designated as the first “UNESCO City of Literature” in North America in 2008.

 

Writing down Iowa in Iowa

 

 

Author Kim Yoo-Jin, who debuted in 2004 with the short story The Language of Wolves (Munhakdongne Publishing), and later published Hideous Night (Munhakdongne Publishing), Summer (Moonji Publishing), and Average Tuning Practice (Munhakdongne Publishing), recorded her journey during the IWP from August 21 to November 11, 2015, in her book Dictation (Nanda). Her story begins not with excitement, but with confusion and exhaustion, as a delayed flight caused her to miss her connection and arrive late to the program. Although there were enjoyable moments, she also candidly described the stress of writing in English.

 

 

Following that advice ? to find a translator - freed her, at least for a while, from the stress of English. But soon another kind of pressure appeared - the need to produce something meaningful. It was a feeling shared by many writers there. In such a vast country as the US, meeting writers from around the world inevitably brought both stimulation and inspiration. The limited time in an unfamiliar space also played a part. She must have not wanted to miss such rare opportunities and experiences.

 

Homesickness in Iowa

 

 

Poet Choi Seung-Ja, one of the leading poets in the Korean literary circle in the 1990s, was also an IWP participant. In 1994, only five years after Korea lifted its restrictions on overseas travel, she boarded a plane to Iowa. To her, the US inevitably felt like another world, because at that time, when communication technology and media were not as developed as they are now, it was difficult to obtain information about the country. For the author, whose knowledge of the country had been limited to fragmentary images and hearsay, her experiences in Iowa became unforgettable memories. In particular, the special memories of meeting people who spoke the same mother tongue in an unfamiliar place are recorded in Some Trees (Nanda).

 

 

Having come without her familiar word processor (an electronic typewriter), Choi sought help from the local Korean church to install a Korean-language program on her new laptop. There, she saw on the faces of the church members who looked at her, “expressions filled with a kind of nostalgia.” It was a reflection on meeting her fellow Koreans in the distant land of Iowa, in the US. For readers familiar with her poetry collections of the 1990s - Love of This Age (Moonji Publishing) and Merry Diary (Moonji Publishing) - which were often described as destructive and unconventional, the emotional, tender side she reveals in this book will feel new.

 

Poetry reborn through translation

 

 

Poet Moon Bo-Young, who debuted in 2016, calls herself a “playful poet.” Worlds of fantasy and online games often serve as the backdrop for her poems. She actively interacts with readers through social media and has been making video “vlogs” as well. She also stands out for her exceptional planning and drive ? she has been sending handwritten diaries by mail and publishing her own one-person literary magazine, Moon Bo-Young: Everything Imaginable (오만 가지 문보영). Within just a year of her debut, she won the prestigious Kim Su-Young Literary Award, and her creative trajectory has been quite different from what most people imagine of a poet. Her experience at the IWP, too, was unlike that of other writers, as revealed in If the Other Side of Life is a Field: An Iowa Diary (Hankyoreh En).

 

 

Poet Moon Bo-Young, who participated in the IWP, also faced the task of translating her own work into English. Yet, she accepted and even enjoyed the process, saying that “it was much more enjoyable than I expected.” Perhaps it was because, unlike poet and translator Choi Seung-Ja, who had taken part in the IWP before her, Moon openly admitted that her English skills “fell far short of the level required for translation.” She even confessed that translating her Korean poems into English felt like writing a prequel or a sequel - that she became more absorbed in the idea of “creating two versions of a poem with the same idea rather than simply translating it.” It was a moment when the act of translation became a new source of inspiration. Perhaps because the experience was so special to her, Moon has since referred to herself, in various media, as both the “self-proclaimed and so-called ambassador of Iowa” and the “Iowa maniac.”

 

 

In 1918, William Lloyd Harding, the 22nd governor of Iowa, issued the Babel Proclamation, which strictly prohibited the use of any language other than English. Today, that same region hosts a thriving international writers’ residency program that welcomes participants from all over the world. Of course, one of the requirements for participating in the program is the ability to communicate in English. Yet, it is precisely for that reason, they say, that writers from all over the world come to realize in Iowa how precious the works they have created in their own native languages truly are. That is why they never forget their time, their companions, and the works they created in Iowa. On the vast land of Iowa, inspiration is growing alongside the grain.

 

 

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Written by Jung Hwan-Jung