Obama sits down with Iowa novelist

President Obama will take part in an in-depth interview with one of his favorite novelists in Iowa on Monday, a spokesman said.

{mosads}Obama will meet Monday with Marilynne Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who lives in Iowa City, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. The interview, which Earnest said would be not “breaking news,” will be published in several weeks in The New York Review of Books.

Obama has described Robinson as a friend and cited her work in his recent eulogy in the wake of the Charleston, S.C., shootings.

The two have met previously, including a ceremony at the White House, where Robinson received a National Humanities Medal. As Obama congratulated the winners, he told Robinson, “Your writings have fundamentally changed me.”

The two will sit down for an untelevised interview on Monday afternoon before Obama takes the stage at a nearby high school to announce reforms to the federal financial aid system. 

It is his 18th visit to Iowa, a battleground state that has held special meaning to Obama, who launched his presidential campaign there in 2008.

Obama’s visit this week has generated headlines, with just two days until the second GOP debate and four months until the state’s 2016 caucus.

”I think when his feelings are hurt, he comes to Iowa,” Robinson told The Nation magazine in January.