Stephen Bloom to Deliver Keynote Address
Professor, School of Journalism
and Mass Communication
Bessie Dutton Murray Professional Scholar
University of Iowa
Storytelling—essentially, recounting the day’s events—used to be one of the oldest and most revered of professions. The platforms we use today to bring news to our community may have changed, but the art and craft of storytelling remains the same. Stephen Bloom will examine why storytelling is still so important to us.
Bloom’s interests include long-form narrative writing, writing for the internet, and the oral histories of journalists. A professor at the University of Iowa where he is the Bessie Dutton Murray Professional Scholar, he teaches narrative journalism and magazine reporting and writing. Bloom has been honored as the 2008 Iowa Author of the Year, and awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
His works include “Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America,” (Harcourt, 2000); “The Oxford Project,” a collaborative project with Peter Feldstein (Welcome Press, 2008) which won the prestigious 2009 Alex Award from the American Library Association; and “Tears of Mermaids: The Secret Story of Pearls” (St. Martin’s Press, 2009). He graduated in 1973 from the University of California at Berkeley.