The Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences welcomed five new faculty members. Discover their journeys and passions in these profiles. 

Zara Chowdhary joins the English Department as an Assistant Professor.

"English at Iowa is such a perfectly interdisciplinary home for me. My colleagues are interested in cinema studies, in lost archives of Black and Brown voices, in how the body and the natural world mirror each other and how colonialism affects it all. The people I’m surrounded by are excavating and building deep and rigorous connections at the intersection of language, scientific and political evolution, and the ethics of being human. And there’s such an internationalist, global, one-world ethos to it all. I find this profoundly inspiring and nurturing.” 

Zara Chowdhary is an author and assistant professor of English. Her debut book The Lucky Ones (Crown/Penguin Random House, 2024), won the 2025 Shakti Bhatt Award for debut memoir and the 2025 best first nonfiction book prize at the Mumbai LitFest. It was also a PEN America finalist, listed on TIME Magazine's top ten nonfiction books of the year, and recognized in lists by Electric Literature, NPR, Esquire, People magazine, and the Atlantic amongst others.

Chowdhary is a multilingual writer of fiction and nonfiction, and translates works in Hindi and Urdu. She has previously taught Hindi and South Asian culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Tin House Summer Workshop, and written for literary magazines including Wasafiri, Acacia and Flyway, amongst others. Her current research interests include environmental science fiction and speculative literature from the subcontinent. She has an MA in Writing for Performance from the University of Leeds and an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State University.

Cherrie Kwok joins the English Department as an assistant professor.

"I am most excited about learning from, and interacting with, my colleagues and their work in the Department of English. There is such an impressive mix of scholarly and creative talent here and I am overjoyed to be part of such an intellectually rich and globally recognized community." 

Cherrie Kwok is an assistant professor of 19th and 20th Century Anglophone literature. Her work places British Romantic and Victorian literature in conversation with literatures from the Global South, especially the Caribbean, South Asia, and East Asia.

Her first book project examines decadence as both a literary theme and political concept in the Anglophone and multilingual literatures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Volupté: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies, Victorian Studies, Victorian Poetry, Humanities, and the German-based Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (Journal for English and American Studies). Her scholarship has received awards and honors from the British Association for Decadence Studies and the Northeast Victorian Studies Association. She earned a PhD in English from the University of Virginia, where she was a Fellow at the Jefferson Scholars Foundation from 2020-2025.
 

Justin Cosner joins the English Department as an associate professor of instruction.

“I am especially excited to teach English in a time mixed with excitement and uncertainty. I believe literature not only steadies us in the face of crisis, clarifying the enduring and shared features of humanity, it also reminds us of our obligations to constantly seek a better world.”

Justin Cosner is an associate professor of instruction specializing in short stories and general education. He taught rhetoric and journalism at the University of Iowa prior to joining the English Department. He has published in Teaching American Literature as well as with Bloomsbury, Routledge, Integratio and other presses. 

Cosner's primary research and teaching interests are 19th and 20th century literature and video games, science fiction, religion and secularity, media theory, and political theory. His ongoing projects include a chapter on masculinity and modern literary studies and a monograph on teaching in a politically polarized era. He earned a PhD in english literature from the University of Iowa.

Julia Conrad joins the English Department as an assistant professor of instruction.

“The book I’m working on explores how community is crucial for great art, and the community here is just unparalleled. My students’ passion has honestly surpassed my expectations, and my colleagues are simultaneously so generous while also making stunning work, that I feel constantly lucky to teach and write alongside them all.”

Julia Conrad is an assistant professor of instruction on the publishing track. She is a writer and Italian translator. Her work has been published in The Massachusetts Review, The Offing, Revista Nexos, Asymptote, and the anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books 2020). Her first book, a hidden history of women in classical music, is forthcoming from Scribner Books.

Conrad brings her professional experience to the department’s growing publishing track. She has worked at a range of presses and agencies, including Wesleyan University Press, New York Review Books, Archipelago Books, and Sarah Lazin Books, where she was a nonfiction literary agent. Most recently, she was an in-house translator for Italy's largest trade publisher, Mondadori Libri, and Agenzia Elastica, a leading Italian speaking and literary agency. She earned MFAs in Nonfiction and Literary Translation from University of Iowa, and is the recipient of Vermont Studio Center, Kimmel Harding Nelson, and Fulbright fellowships.

PJ Zaborowski joins the English Department as an assistant professor of instruction. 

“I’m excited to continue my journey in a department that has been central to my growth as a teacher and scholar. Transitioning from PhD student to faculty feels especially meaningful in a community so committed to creativity, innovation, and inclusive teaching—especially in what I consider the nation’s most vibrant literary landscape.”

PJ Zaborowski is an assistant professor of instruction teaching in the General Education Literature program. He researches how people have communicated from the Middle Ages to today, how communication can be distorted, and the consequences of such distortions. His dissertation—and current book project—examines the crucial but often overlooked role of medieval messengers, both as purveyors of information and as literary devices through which authors explored the fragility of communication in the medieval world system.

His work has been published in Arthuriana. He has long been fascinated by stories—their purpose, their potency, and their power—and strives to bring this excitement into the classroom. He earned a PhD in english literature and an MA in library and information science from the University of Iowa.