Writers' Workshop alum and New York Times best-selling author Leslie Jamison will read from her highly anticipated memoir, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story. She will be joined in conversation by Kaveh Akbar. “In Splinters, Jamison offers a riveting portrait of rupture that is at once a page-turner about divorce, a romance about parenthood, a mystery of self after splintering, and a promise that however many times we break or are broken, art and love will never fail to mend us.” ―Melissa...

Poets Christopher Merrill and Christopher Bolin will read from their new books of poetry. Christopher Merrill will read from On the Road to Lviv. Prismatic and polysemous, On the Road to Lviv invites us on an odyssey across Ukraine in the hour of war. "This chronicle/ Took shape the day the war began, which was/ My 65th birthday," writes legendary traveler, war correspondent, memoirist and poet Christopher Merrill. At once deeply personal yet rooted in history so recent you can almost see the...

Join us monthly to generate new creative writing inspired by works in the Stanley collection. Each session will be led by a different talented writer from our area, who will be offering a new prompt and a new approach to ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by visual art). Bring your own notebook and pencil or computer and leave with the beginning of a newly written piece. Co-sponsored by Iowa City Poetry. Teen and adult writers in all genres are welcome. Write at the Stanley meets every fourth...

The UI Nonfiction Writing Program presents the book launch for Nonfiction, the Teaching of Writing, and the Influence of Richard Lloyd-Jones, edited by NWP Alumni Laura Julier & Douglas Hesse. This special event, held Friday, Feb. 23 at the Nonfiction Writing House (530 N. Clinton St.), features NWP alumni Laura Julier, Douglas Hesse, John T. Price, Tom Montgomery Fate, and writer Patricia Foster, who was a professor in the NWP for 25 years. 

Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Christina Cooke will read from her enthralling debut novel, Broughtupsy. She will be joined in conversation by fellow alum Sarah Thankam Mathews. (Broughtupsy is) “A luminous tale of a latter-day Antigone who navigates grief, love, death, sex, violence, language, queerness, race, and three countries with courage, joy, and a tender heart. Broughtupsy is an instant classic and Christina Cooke brings beauty and truth to every page.”—Stacey D'Erasmo Christina Cooke's...

Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by Prairie Lights, to celebrate Margot Livesey’s new novel, The Road from Belhaven. Livesey is professor of fiction in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of 10 other books. After the reading, Lan Samantha Chang, Writers’ Workshop program director and Elizabeth M. Stanley Professor in the Arts, will join Livesey for a conversation and Q&A with the audience. Appetizers and wine will be available.               Monday, Feb. 19, 2024       ...

Join Johnson County Libraries for the latest virtual Local Libraries LIT event, featuring Rich Benjamin. Rich Benjamin keenly and deftly observes modern society, culture, and politics. His cultural and political analysis appear regularly in public debate. Rich is the author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, which was selected as an Editor’s Choice by both Booklist and The American Library Association. This groundbreaking study is one of few to have...

The writing community is gathering in Kansas City, Missouri, next month—and it’s a perfect time to connect with your fellow Hawkeyes!   Join Iowa alumni and friends and faculty, staff, and students from the university writing community. Hors d'oeuvres and nonalcoholic beverages will be provided.  This event will help kick off the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, which will be held Feb. 7–10 in Kansas City, Missouri.  We hope you can join us!  

Come celebrate the Chinese New Year at Prairie Lights! Writers' Workshop alum Aaron Hwang will read from and talk about his books The Chinese Zodiac: And Other Paths to Luck, Riches & Prosperity and a brand new children's version, A Kid's Guide to the Chinese Zodiac: Animal Horoscopes, Legendary Myths, and Practical Uses for Ancient Wisdom. In the books, Hwang explains that the Lunar New Year is an ideal moment to celebrate a new year, the coming of spring—and the new Zodiac animal that governs...

Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-Winning author Kij Johnson will read from her short story collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending, published by Small Beer Press. "Ursula Le Guin comes immediately to mind when you turn the pages of Kij Johnson's first book of short stories, her debut collection is that impressive. The title piece has that wonderful power we hope for in all fiction we read, the surprising imaginative leap that takes us to recognize the marvelous in the everyday."—Alan...

Join us monthly to generate new creative writing inspired by works in the Stanley collection. Each session will be led by a different talented writer from our area, who will be offering a new prompt and a new approach to ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by visual art). Bring your own notebook and pencil or computer and leave with the beginning of a newly written piece. Co-sponsored by Iowa City Poetry. Teen and adult writers in all genres are welcome. Write at the Stanley meets every fourth...

Writers' Workshop alum Kevin Clouther will read from his latest short story collection, Maximum Speed. Booklist enthuses, "These wonderfully evocative, interconnected stories are about growing up, growing apart, and how modern communications technology enables distant figures from the past to suddenly be brought into the present." Author Frances de Pontes Peebles writes, "With meticulous craft and profound compassion, Kevin Clouther conjures this vibrant collection of connected stories of...

Bradley Tusk: Lunch & Q&A with Venture Capitalist and Bookstore Owner  To subscribe to a weekly emailing list of Writers' Workshop events, please fill in the linked form or email iww@uiowa.edu with “Events Mailing List Subscribe” in the subject line.

Ted Anton will read from and talk about his grand tour through synthetic biology, Programmable Planet. “If you’ve ever wondered about the promise―and the peril―of synthetic biology and its power to transform life, then Programmable Planet is the book for you. Ted Anton’s exploration of both the history and the future of the ways we engineer life is incisive, engaging, and downright fascinating. -- Deborah Blum Ted Anton is Professor Emeritus of English at DePaul University. He is the author of...

Please join us on Zoom for a special reading and conversation with best-selling author Mary Pipher and Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program Professor Emerita Patricia Foster, who will talk about A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence. To attend this virtual event, REGISTER HERE. In this luminous memoir in essays, Mary Pipher—as she did in her New York Times bestseller Women Rowing North—taps into a cultural moment, to offer wisdom, hope, and insight into loss and change. Drawing from her own...

Iowa City author Andy Douglas will read from Songs of the New Dawn: Selected song-poems of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. The poems are in the vein of Rumi or Hafiz, speaking of the divine energy flowing through all creation. The book also features 20 full-page illustrations by artist Kindle Corwell, depicting subtle aspects of the poems, bringing out their beauty even more. This event will feature poetry reading, a display of art from the book, and music from multi-instrumentalist Craig Klocke and...

Please join us from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for Claudia McGehee's Iowa River Frost Fair (an event in name inspired by medieval artisan fairs held on the frozen river Thames in London, home to Claudia’s ancestors!). Iowa City based Illustrator/Author Claudia will sign her new 2024 Engagement Calendars, copies of her beloved illustrated books, and we will have lots of her new holiday cards and prints on hand! All who stop by will receive a small Frost Fair paper gift.   Claudia McGehee is a local...

PEN-Faulkner Award-winning author and Writers' Workshop visiting faculty Kate Christensen will read from her new masterwork of fiction, Welcome Home, Stranger !  “Kate Christensen’s new novel, Welcome Home, Stranger is a revelation, offering characters as real as your family and friends, a rich, vividly drawn setting, grab-you-by-the-throat drama and always, lurking in the shadows, a fierce authorial intelligence. What more could you ask?”—Richard Russo Kate Christensen is the author of seven...

Cleo Qian will read from her short story collection, LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S GO, longlisted for The Story Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction.  These 11 short stories explore the alienated and technology-mediated lives of young Asian and Asian-American women today. "Cleo Qian's LET'S GO LET'S GO LET'S GO is an uncanny Asian American fantasia where fringe artist collectives, melancholy K-pop stars, anxious piano prodigies, disembodied digital ghosts, and lovelorn...

Ted Wheeler will read from his new novel, The War Begins in Paris, and be joined in conversation by Mary Helen Stefaniak. "Paris was home for the foreign correspondents who covered events in Europe for British and American media outlets during the interwar period. With the fall of France in 1940, a few of them such as the factual William Joyce, Robert Best, and Jane Anderson stayed behind and were recruited by Joseph Goebbels to broadcast treasonous Nazi propaganda from Germany. Theodore Wheeler...

Iowa City author Cheryl Walsh will read from her debut novel, Unequal Temperament. Through the lens of art, music, and meteorology, Unequal Temperament examines how we navigate the storms of our lives. "Sharply observed, built of masterful prose, Unequal Temperament affirms the vitality of art in our lives at a time when devotion to craft and the pursuit of the sublime are made out to be old-fashioned terms. This is a book as awed by a great piece of music as it is by the shadings and...

Award-winning author of A Questionable Shape and White Dialogues, Bennett Sims will read from his new collection Other Minds and Other Stories, published by Two Dollar Radio. "[Bennett Sims] draws on academia, art, and technology for a superb collection about identity and memory.... Throughout, Sims boldly plays with form, such as in 'Introduction to the Reading of Hegel,' which consists of one paragraph that extends for nearly 30 pages and chronicles an adjunct professor’s self-sabotage as he...

Join us for an inspiring evening with Yeonmi Park, a North Korean defector turned human rights activist and TED Speaker. Park's powerful story of escape from North Korea, her viral TED talks, and her mission to combat oppression worldwide will be discussed. The event is open to the public, free, and will also be livestreamed. A Q&A session will follow. Don't miss this chance to hear Yeonmi Park's incredible journey and her call to action for freedom and human rights.

Translator Wendy Call will read from In the Belly of Night and Other Poems by Irma Pineda. "Irma Pineda's poems and Wendy Call's translations evoke tragedy, and celebrate the ways in which the human is built from dream, tradition, and nature. Self-translated as "mirror-poems" by Pineda, from Isthmus Zapotec into Spanish, and then translated into English through a complex process that is fascinatingly articulated by Call, the trilingual poems in this collection show us how translation serves as...

Sara Nicholson will read from April. "Intimate and expansive, with dazzling wit and music throughout, Nicholson's poems fit the stars, the sun, the trees, and their sap in the same frame."--Michael Andor Brodeur Sara Nicholson is the author of What the Lyric Is and The Living Method, published by The Song Cave. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Review, Harper's, Poetry, The New York Times, and the Yale Review. In 2018, she was the Holloway Poet-in-Residence at the University of California...