Film Adventure and Literary Extravaganza!

I'm almost all caught up with blog posts!

I've decided to combine two awesome events together. First up, my film professor from NYC, Alan, was in town to promote his film festival, Rural Route Films. Rina, Amy, and I headed to CSPS, a landmark building in Cedar Rapids located in the Newbo District.

Alan had an excellent turnout for his festival. The films he showed were short films from the 2013 film festival (which premiered in NYC). After the main premiere, Alan gets to travel the world, showing off these short films and promoting his festival.

The films were excellent, a good solid choice of unique films. Some were very short, only a couple minutes long, and the longest was just over 20 minutes. Although they all were "rural" in some way, each had a new twist and topic to think about. And of course, it was good to see Alan and have a mini NYC Term reunion.

Then, today (Saturday), The Coe Review took a bunch of our staff members to Iowa City for the Iowa City Book Festival. Today, there were panels and readings downtown and a literary buzz in the air. It was BEAUTIFUL day in Iowa City. During the day, I went to a panel about fact vs. fiction and then two readings. The second reading was my favorite, mainly due to hearing Tessa Mellas' short story. I had heard Tessa earlier in the day at the panel and was looking forward to hearing one of her short stories. It was fantastic and I ended up buying her book. The best part was, I even got her autographed. We chatted briefly after the reading and it was so cool. Definitely geeking out a bit!

I finished up my time in Iowa City with meeting up with a family friend, Eileen. We got coffee, checked out a great used bookshop, and walked around campus. It was great to see Eileen and a nice way to end the day.