Kate Wisel will talk about her linked short stories, Driving in Cars With Homeless Men.  "Driving in Cars With Homeless Men is gritty in the best sense. These 20 linked short stories—some of them very short—offer up hard granules of truth about contemporary women contending with dispossession, oppression, and violence. By focusing on the lives and friendships of four main characters living in working-class Boston . . . so too does she reveal bigger realities about substance abuse, family...

Thomas Cook will read from and talk about his new book published by Ice Cube Press, Clubfoot: The Quest for a Better Life for Millions of Children.  Clubfoot tells the little-known story of the remarkable Ignacio Ponseti, who developed a revolutionary non-surgical treatment for clubfoot to eliminate lifelong disability for the 200,000 children born every year with this deformity.  Ponseti (1914–2009), began his medical career as a medic in the Spanish Civil War before being he was forced into...

University of Iowa alum Michael Zapata will read from his debut novel, The Lost Book of Adana Moreau. "Zapata is a thrilling new talent. Alternating between the quest for a man in post-Katrina New Orleans for whom a mystery manuscript was left to be posthumously delivered, and the tale the manuscript itself tells, The Lost Book of Adana Moreau is an ambitious novel that probes for friendship, the possibility of parallel worlds, and the way the real and the unreal meet at every moment." —Ingrid...

The IWP (International Writing Program) and University of Iowa guest Cristiane Sobral take over the second floor of Prairie Lights—grab a glass of wine or a fancy soda and settle in for an hour of highlights from their best work! Reading this Sunday: Soukaina Habiballah (poetry, fiction, screenwriting; #Morocco) has four poetry collections and one novel [The Barracks] (2016), with a second novel forthcoming in 2019. Habiballah has received many awards including, in 2015, the Buland Al...

Marvin Bell, who taught poetry for over forty years at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and was Iowa's first poet laureate, will read from Incarnate: The Collected Dead Man Poems. "Marvin Bell's Dead Man poems should close out any anthology of the twentieth century and open any anthology of this new century's work. They change the game. They insist that we pay a new and different kind of attention." —The Georgia Review Marvin Bell was born in New York City in 1937 and raised in rural...

David Hamilton, University of Iowa professor emeritus and former editor of the Iowa Review, will read from A Certain Arc: Essays of Finding My Way.  “As one would expect from such a distinguished educator and editor, the prose in this collection is beautifully turned, the intelligence luminous, and the experience and wisdom of a lifetime generously shared: this book is a gift to all literature lovers. But what seems even more striking and rare, in this age of self–absorbed memoir, is the...

Writers’ Workshop graduate Shaun Hamill will read from A Cosmology of Monsters.  "A monster stalks a family across generations; a hidden city beckons from beyond perception; trauma and human frailty and loss bear their terrible fangs. . . . A Cosmology of Monsters is as weird and compelling and ambitious a horror novel as you could possibly want." —Carmen Maria Machado A native of Arlington, Texas, Shaun Hamill lives in the dark woods of Alabama with his wife, his in-laws, and his dog. 

Prairie Lights and the Iowa City Public Library present Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief and The Messenger, to read from his recent novel, Bridge of Clay.  An unforgettable and sweeping family saga, Bridge of Clay is the breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance. At the center of the Dunbar...

Poet Timothy Donnelly will read from The Problem of the Many. "Timothy Donnelly meditates on the very terms that make meditation possible—terms such as 'knowledge,' 'mystery,' 'particular,' 'mind,' and 'will' . . . and he makes the tough time we have pinning those terms down into one of his typical subjects." —Steph Burt Poems from The Problem of the Many have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, the New Republic, A Public Space, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. Donnelly is...

Chicago based fiction writers Abby Geni and Jac Jemc will read from their fiction. Writers’ Workshop Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction Abby Geni will read from The Wildlands. A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, The Wildlands was also named a Best Book of the Fall by Buzzfeed, Refinery 29, Bustle, PopSugar, HuffPost, and Real Simple. "Geni's character-driven environmental thriller—think Silent Spring by way of Celeste Ng—centers on...

Susan Steinberg will read from Machine: A Novel, published by Graywolf.  “After making waves with her book Spectacle, bold stylist Susan Steinberg resurfaces with her first novel, a tale of gender, class, privilege and trauma set during a summer at the shore. . . . The narrative grapples with guilt and blame while eschewing formal conventions.” ―Chicago Tribune Susan Steinberg is the author of Spectacle, Hydroplane, and The End of Free Love. She is the recipient of a United States Artists...

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor of the Storm Lake Times Art Cullen will read from Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper.   "Cullen’s book demonstrates the important role that local editors play in standing up and speaking to power in America . . . Storm Lake is an engaging, folksy read about how a small-town newspaper editor copes with existential threats to a way of life and an industry vital to American democracy in a state known for...

New York Times-bestselling author Rebecca Traister will read from Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger.  Good and Mad was a Best Books of 2018 selection by The Washington Post, People, NPR, Esquire, Elle, Wired, and Refinery 29. “In a year when issues of gender and sexuality dominated the national conversation, no one shaped that exchange more than Rebecca Traister. Her wise and provocative columns helped make sense of a cultural transformation.” —National Magazine Award...

New York Times best-selling author William Kent Krueger will read from his new novel, This Tender Land.  "A picaresque tale of adventure during the Great Depression. Part Grapes of Wrath, part Huckleberry Finn, Krueger's novel is a journey over inner and outer terrain toward wisdom and freedom." —Minneapolis Star Tribune William Kent Krueger is the author of Ordinary Grace, winner of the Edgar Award for best novel, as well as eighteen Cork O'Connor novels, including Desolation Mountain and...

The Iowa City Book Festival presents Lisa Tetrault, who will talk about her book The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898. “This provocative work challenges the standard narrative of the history of the women's rights movement in the United States. Even more important, however, it aids readers in understanding how collective historical memory is created and shaped. . . . Fascinating. . . . Recommended for scholars in women's history, constitutional history...

The Iowa City Book Festival presents Donika Kelly and Melissa Febos, who will read from their work. 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner and 2016 National Book Award long-listed poet Donika Kelly will read from Bestiary: Poems.  “What a gorgeous book of poems. The love poems, in particular, are striking with unexpected ideas and imagery coalescing into poetry about this thing called love. . . . This one, I savored.” ―Roxane Gay Donika Kelly’s poems have appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review...

The Iowa City Book Festival presents Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, who will read from House of Stone. “With luminous language, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma explores the treacherous terrain of colonization and decolonization, remembering and forgetting, and love and betrayal. The result is a gripping account of revolution and its aftermath, both for a country and for one man.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen Novuyo Rosa Tshuma grew up in Zimbabwe and lives in Houston, Texas. Her short story collection, Shadows, won the 2014...

The Iowa City Book Festival presents Kendra Allen, winner of the Iowa Prize in Literary Nonfiction, who will read from her essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet.  "Kendra Allen's When You Learn the Alphabet is a roaring meditation on what black daughters in our nation do with what and how they've been taught. The book brilliantly animates the formal and informal education processes of becoming grown in America.” —Kiese Laymon Kendra Allen’s work has been published in Brevity, December...

The Iowa City Book Festival Presents Eileen Pollack, who will read from her new novel based loosely on Unabomber Ted Kaczinski, The Professor of Immortality. "A Perfect Life probes how we live in the face of uncertainty and the ways risk can both disable and empower us. In her latest novel, Eileen Pollack has crafted a tender exploration of family love that is as smart and thought-provoking as it is moving." —Celeste Ng A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Pollack is the author of the...

Writers’ Workshop graduates Daniel Poppick and Jessica Laser will read from their work. Jessica Laser will read from Sergei Kuzmich from All Sides, published by Letter Machine Editions.  “Finally an oracle with a gorgeous sense of humor. Jessica Laser's vision is singular, her voice at once formidable and intimate. Its impeccable wit imparts a bracing metaphysics” —Margaret Ross.  Laser is also the author of two chapbooks. She lives in Berkeley, California, where she is currently a PhD...

The Iowa City Book Festival presents Jamaican poet and novelist Kei Miller, who is an Ida Beam scholar visiting the UI’s International Writing Program. Miller is the author of the novel Augustown,  two previous novels, several poetry collections, and a collection of short stories. He was short-listed for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book; he won the Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection. He lives in London and teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London...

The Sustainable Iowa Land Trust (SILT) presents Raj Patel, who will discuss his latest work, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet.  Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: at a time of crisis in all seven cheap things, innovative and systemic thinking is urgently required. This book proposes a radical new way of understanding--and reclaiming--the planet in the turbulent twenty-first century. Patel will also show...

The Iowa City Book Festival presents bestselling mystery author John Sandford. When John Sandford first walked the streets of Iowa City, he was known as John Camp, an aspiring journalist who was attending the journalism program at the University of Iowa. He returns as a Pulitzer Prize-winner and a New York Times bestselling mystery author. The Cedar Rapids native is the author of 40 novels, including 29 in the Lucas Davenport Prey series, and 11 in the Virgil Flowers series. Sandford will...

Holy Rover author Lori Erickson will read from her new book, Near the Exit.  After her brother died unexpectedly and her mother moved into a dementia-care facility, spiritual travel writer and Episcopal deacon Lori Erickson felt called to a new quest: to face death head on, with the eye of a tourist and the heart of a pastor. Blending memoir, spirituality, and travel, Near the Exit examines how cultures confront and have confronted death, from Egypt's Valley of the Kings and Mayan temples, to a...

Catfish Solution: The Power of Positive Poking. Catfish Solution is memoir and story, revelation and explanation, comedy and critique with inspiration to citizen action by a Washington insider who took on the shipping and broadcasting industries. Johnson is the author of Columns of Democracy. He has been a TV show host, columnist, congressional candidate, Washington lawyer, and school board member, among other things. Included in The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law as one of 700...