Approxiamtely 5,000 miles separate Iowa City from Moscow, but on Friday, the two very different places will come together on the stage.

Book Wings will take place at 10 a.m. on Friday in the Theatre Building’s Theatre B. The event involves commissioned poems performed in Iowa City and Moscow at the same time. The Moscow Art Theatre will be connected with Theatre B through a high-definition video conference, enabling both audiences to see and hear both stages.

This event, one of the first of its kind, was made possible by a grant from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. State Department and a partnership between the International Writing Program and the Moscow Art Theatre.

The commissioned poems come from young American and Russian poets: Matthew Zapruder, Dora Malech, Terrance Hayes, Quan Barry, Inga Kuznetsova, Anna Russ, Linor Goralik, and Maxim Amelin.

People around the globe, as well as in Iowa City and Moscow, will be able to hear the work of the poets via a live video stream hosted by the UI Virtual Writing University.

— by Julia Jessen