WVIK, Quad Cities NPR and the Midwest Writing Center have teamed up to produce a new podcast that examines the tumultuous time that was 2020. These Interesting Times, named after the MWC collection published in 2021, features 47 local writers reading pieces based on their experiences weathering the global pandemic. The podcast will be featured on the QuadCities.com podcast hub, and other forums. “2020 was a disaster…” reads the back cover of These Interesting Times. “In these moving and eloquent essays and poems, stories and artwork writers and artists of the Quad Cities report on the... Read More

Saturday in the Arts is a weekly feature covering a trend, subject, event or personality of local interest. It runs every Saturday morning on your site for the best entertainment and arts coverage in the area, QuadCities.com! If it wasn’t for a man who later became WQPT-TV general manager, National Public Radio (NPR) likely would never have started. This past week, NPR celebrated its 50th anniversary. Jerrold Sandler — who died in Moline Feb. 24, 1995 at age 64, from a heart attack after cancer surgery – got public radio added to the mission of the then-new Corporation for Public Broadcasting... Read More

Roald Tweet had a way with words, with listeners, with his comforting voice, and his patient, relentless curiosity and compassion will be felt in the Quad-Cities for years to come. The 87-year-old Augustana College professor emeritus of English died on Wednesday after a brief illness (congestive heart failure and Covid-19), and the tremendous loss reverberates throughout the community. “He was my teacher from the time I was seventeen till now,” said Ann Boaden (Augie Class of ’67), a longtime English professor who retired in 2016. “His brilliance, his puckish wit and playfulness, his persistence... Read More