Musicians, authors, and artists will flood into Iowa City this weekend as Mission Creek Festival gears up. Celebrating its 19th year, the Mission Creek Festival has been an Iowa City staple event since 2006. The festival is modeled after the original Mission Creek Festival based in San Francisco, California. The festival prides itself on uniting literature and music enthusiasts alike. It started in 2005 when Andre Perry, the University of Iowa Hancher Auditorium’s executive director, moved to Iowa City. Perry worked on the original California Mission Creek as a producer and wanted to bring something similar to Iowa when he moved.

At just 40 years old, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib has covered a hell of a lot of ground in his career. A 2021 MacArthur fellow, his work has earned him an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence (for A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance) as well as landed him on the National Book Award longlist (for Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest). He’s the subject of a mural in his hometown of Columbus, commissioned by Cbus Libraries, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the library system in central Ohio. He’s been a visiting professor at institutions including Butler University and the University of Iowa, and he holds an honorary degree in the field of human ecology from the College of the Atlantic.

Englert Theatre’s annual Mission Creek Festival is returning this April 4–6, 2024 for three days full of music and literature. Its stacked lineup includes national powerhouses like Indigo De Souza and Neko Case as well as local acts such as Anthony Worden and the Dave Helmer Band.