Amanda Kloser was born and raised in Dubuque, and she had no plans of leaving. It was not until a year and a half ago that the idea of moving away from her friends and family to a foreign country crossed her mind.

Amanda Kloser, a UI graduate with a M.A.T. in Secondary Education: English, is the winner of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship grant to Turkey for 2016-17.

Delaney Nolan, an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, traveled to Istanbul on a Stanley Award. She researched topics such as gender, sexuality, and feminism within modern and historical Turkish society, which enabled her to write two short stories. She reflects on her research and the lively city of Istanbul in the following story.