In 1926, Iowa writer Ruth Suckow published Iowa Interiors, a collection of 14 short stories drawn from the lives of people in the state’s farms and small towns. A century later, the book is returning to print in a new centennial edition from Cedar Falls-based Final Thursday Press, with new illustrations by Iowa artist Claudia McGehee. The Hearst Center for the Arts in Cedar Falls is marking the anniversary with an exhibition of McGehee’s original illustrations, running September 10 through December 6. The exhibition is part of a broader effort to bring Suckow’s work back to readers. Suckow was already an established writer when Iowa Interiors appeared. Her first novel, Country People, had been published in 1924, followed by The Odyssey of a Nice Girl in 1925. Iowa Interiors, published by Alfred A. Knopf, further established her reputation and has since become one of the works most closely associated with her portrayals of Iowa life.
The beekeeper who became a chronicler of Iowa
Before her literary career fully took hold, Suckow had an unusual occupation for a writer: beekeeping. She spent years in Earlville, Iowa, where she managed the Orchard Apiary. A 1930 Time profile described her as the manager-owner of the apiary, which she operated for six years. Suckow’s connection with Earlville would become an important part of her life and literary history.Her fiction focused on the people she observed around her, farmers, families, renters, ministers and residents of small communities. Iowa Interiors contains stories such as “A Start in Life,” “A Homecoming,” “Uprooted,” “Renters” and “A Rural Community,” depicting the pressures and changes shaping everyday life in early 20th-century Iowa. The complete original collection runs 283 pages. The Hearst Center describes the 1926 collection as the work that established Suckow’s national reputation.
A century-old book gets another life
For today’s readers, one obstacle has been finding Suckow’s books in the first place. The Ruth Suckow Memorial Association says copies of Iowa Interiors have become increasingly difficult to find. The association has made many of the original stories available online while preparing for the new edition.The centennial edition is intended to change that. Final Thursday Press is publishing the new volume, edited by Julie Husband and Jim O’Loughlin. It will include a new introduction as well as illustrations commissioned from Claudia McGehee, whose work is being displayed at the Hearst Center alongside the anniversary celebration.McGehee has created 14 scratchboard illustrations, one for each story in the collection. The exhibition gives visitors a chance to see the original artwork while revisiting the world Suckow captured a century ago.
Why Iowa Interiors still matters
Suckow’s Iowa was markedly different from the state of 2026. Her stories emerged from a world of small farms, village communities and economic constraints, rather than the large-scale agricultural landscape that dominates much of Iowa today. But the subjects of her fiction are less distant: people trying to make a living, maintain families, find independence and adjust to communities changing around them.That is part of what the editors of the new edition hope readers will rediscover. Rather than treating Iowa Interiors simply as a historical record, the centennial project presents it as literature that can still speak to contemporary readers. A century after its first publication, the book is therefore returning to the place and literary tradition that shaped it, giving a new generation a chance to meet the Iowa that Suckow saw, one ordinary life at a time.
