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Mission Creek Summer Sessions

Elizabeth Moen & McGuirk

 Free

  Weatherdance Stage

Event Description

This event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required for attendance!

Box Office Hours

Tuesday - Friday
10:00 AM - 5:30 PM
(319) 688-2653
info@englert.org

After a year of canceled events, we weren’t quite ready for the Mission Creek fun to end! We’re excited to announce Mission Creek Summer Sessions, a series of free outdoor events featuring music and spoken word made possible through support from the City of Iowa City and presented by Mission Creek and the Iowa City Downtown District.

Elizabeth Moen

Blending fierce, massive vocals and raw bluesy guitar with introspective lyrics and electronic textures, Elizabeth Moen “showcases both strength and vulnerability, reminding us that these traits often go hand in hand” (NPR Music).

In her heartland hometown of Vinton, Iowa, Moen taught herself guitar as a teenager. “I’ve always been able to sit alone in my thoughts,” she says, “but I can’t sit in silence.” She noticed this innate need to make noise at a young age, and affectionately referred to it as “an emotional journey with no destination.”

But Moen did arrive somewhere: at her first performance. She credits the experience with transforming her relationship to songwriting.“I felt understood for the first time,” she says. “I realized songs were the best way I could explain my thoughts and feelings to others — and to myself.” She dedicated herself to the process, writing incessantly, recording prolifically, and performing as much as the public would have her.

Then came a pandemic. Like so many artists (and humans), Moen felt derailed, but her focus remained steadfast and her default coping mechanism as relevant as ever; she kept writing songs. “I’ve realized there are only certain things I have control of in life and I gotta just keep growing, healing, and learning. These songs helped me while I wrote them in quarantine.”

McGuirk

Sara McGuirk currently teaches at the University of Iowa Magid Center for Undergraduate Writing. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA in English and Film Studies from the University of Notre Dame. She was the winner of the 2017 Phyllis Smart-Young Prize in poetry and a finalist for the 2017 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Prize in poetry. Sara works at a bike shop and performs with the I.C. Kings drag troupe.

Elizabeth Moen photo credit: Alexa Viscius

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