Drake University professor Carol Roh Spauling will read from and talk about her new book, Waiting for Mr. Kim and Other Stories with author Sam Chang. “In Carol Roh Spaulding's amazing linked story collection, Waiting for Mr. Kim and Other Stories, we find that rare gift--writing that gets just about everything done, and done very well. Every page not only delights and instructs but also provokes and moves us, lingering like a remembered dream. ... Waiting will quietly pull you in and knock you...

Former Iowa Citian John J. Waters will read from his debut novel, River City One. The tale of a man and the memory that haunts him, River City One is the poetic and compassionate story of John Walker, a lawyer and ex-Marine adrift in a nameless city. Home from the war, he has become a man on the edge, quietly raging against the people he must now work for and live among—the kind of people incapable of understanding the terror he felt in combat and the guilt he carries in his heart. John J...

POSTPONED! Poet and Professor Elizabeth Willis will be reading from her work and answering questions regarding writing and poetry. To submit questions, visit https://forms.office.com/r/XbP8rXgfxf

The Writers' Workshop presents a reading with Workshop visiting faculty members, Kate Christensen and Cody-Rose Clevidence. Cody-Rose Clevidence is the author of Aux Arc / Trypt Ich (Nightboat, 2021), Listen My Friend, This is the Dream I Dreamed Last Night (The Song Cave, 2021), Flung/Throne (Ahsahta, 2018), and BEAST FEAST (Ahsata Press, 2014), as well as several chapbooks (flowers and cream, NION, garden door press, Auric). They live in the Arkansas Ozarks.  Kate Christensen is the author...

The Writers' Workshop presents a Q&A with D.A. Powell.  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.

The Writers' Workshop presents a Q&A with Danez Smith. "Danez Smith is the author of three collections including Homie and Don’t Call Us Dead. They have won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and have been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, the National Book Critic Circle Award, and the National Book Award. Danez's poetry and prose has been featured in Vanity Fair, The...

The Writers' Workshop presents a reading with D.A. Powell. D. A. Powell's books include Cocktails (Graywolf, 2004) and Chronic (Graywolf, 2009), both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, and Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (Graywolf, 2012), winner of the 2013 Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Powell's awards include the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Kingsley Tufts Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and the California Book Award.1...

Alexandra Chang Reading and Q&A Books will be available for purchase at the event.

Join us with Workshop Director Sam Chang and Workshop professor Margot Livesey for a reading and discussion of Chang’s Hunger: A Novella and Stories, which has just been reissued by W.W. Norton for the 25th anniversary of its publication. Chang wrote Hunger when she was a student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Livesey was her thesis advisor. A powerful exploration of the Asian American experience, Hunger illuminates the lives of first-generation immigrants from China, culturally and...

The Writers' Workshop presents a reading with Writers' Workshop Professor of Poetry, James Galvin. James Galvin has published eight books of poems, most recently Everything We Always Knew Was True (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). His new and collected poems, Resurrection Update (Copper Canyon Press, 1997), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and the Poet's Prize. His poetry collection, God's Mistress, was a National Poetry Series winner. James...

Join novelists Laura Kat Young and Anya Johanna DeNiro as they read from their new books, The Collector and OKPsyche. The Collector is described as “A frightening dystopian horror novel where grief is forbidden and purged from the mind—a nightmarish mix of 1984 and Never Let Me Go.” Publisher’s Weekly says "Writing in spare prose, Young harkens to some of the dystopian greats, with a keeper of memories who seems right out of The Giver, and a horrific solstice celebration scene of public gore...

Join Robyn Schiff as she reads from her newest release Information Desk, a book-length poem set in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The New York Review of Books calls Information Desk “An effluvial rush of memory, desire, data, and metaphor . . . It’s bracing to encounter a mind so voracious, so unapologetic in its intelligence.”  Robyn Schiff is the author of four poetry collections, Worth, Revolver, A Woman of Property, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and most...

Please join us with poets Annelyse Gelman and Eleni Sikelianos, who will read from their latest books. Annelyse Gelman will read from Vexations, winner of the 2022 James Laughlin Award and longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Poetry. “Vexations is a brilliant, dizzying, necessarily unnerving take on the project of the state and the varied estrangements on which it feeds. Demanding and speculative, Gelman’s book-length poem names the absurd conditions out of which we (readers), and...

Join us for a special 5 p.m. event with graphic memoirist Amy Kurzweil, who will read from and show images from Artificial: A Love Story, which tells the story of her father, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, and his mission to—through AI and salvaged documents—"resurrect" the identity of his father, a Viennese musician and escapee from the Nazis. Called "Far-reaching and fascinating" by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast; Michael Chabon writes, "Kurzweil is at the peak of her powers as a...

Mary Swander says of Hand Shadow Rod, “Like one of the characters in her fairy tales, Leo takes the reader on an enchanting world tour of Eulenspiegel Puppet Theatre Company performances. With beautifully written prose and masterfully crafted block prints, Leo is the trickster in this narrative. A highly recognized puppeteer, partner, teacher, and mentor, Leo models not only artistry but entrepreneurship. You will delight in her story, how she founded her troupe and has kept it flourishing for...

CANCELED Writers’ Workshop graduate Thomas Dodson will read from No Use Pretending, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, a collection that encompasses diverse genres, from ecologically informed realism to a Kafkaesque fairy tale, from fabulist “weird fiction” to an episode from The Odyssey that becomes a meditation on what distinguishes human beings from animals. Says Margot Livesey, “Thomas Dodson is a writer wonderfully aware of the resources of fiction and the necessities of the world...

mahogany is about the passing of time and unimaginable loss, strength, humor, and love. The book takes its name from the dark wood prized for its durability, workability, and elegant look, and from the Diana Ross movie, whose theme song asks if what lies ahead is what you really want. This book is the third in a trilogy, and like the first two books it is steeped in pop music.  erica lewis was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is based in San Francisco. Her books include the precipice of jupiter...

UI Nonfiction Writing Program alum Micah Fields reads from his new book, We Hold Our Breath: A Journey to Texas Between Storms, on Thursday, Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. at Prairie Lights Books. This Krause Series in Contemporary Nonfiction event is sponsored by the Nonfiction Writing Program. All are welcome. We Hold Our Breath is a unique and poetic blend of reportage, history, and memoir. John D’Agata says of We Hold Our Breath, “Rather than blindly condemning its industry, its sprawl, its ugliness...

Join the African American Museum of Iowa for their brand-new book club, Book Club 802, in a reading of Rebecca Hall's graphic novel Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts.  “Powerful.... Wake is operating in the wake of slavery, and in a state of being awake to the past, a process Hall frames as both devastating and grounding."—New York Times Book Review Book Club 802 draws its name from Iowa House File 802, legislation which bans Iowa governmental entities––including K-12 schools...

Iowa City's own Tim Johnston will read from his novel Distant Sons. He will be joined in conversation by Chair of the UI English Department and host of the podcast Writing Matters, Blaine Greteman.  "Tim Johnston returns in dazzling form with Distant Sons, an intricate, haunting novel sure to resonate with fans of Dennis Lehane, Peter Heller, and James Lee Burke. Johnston's plot is tense and his pacing swift, but he's after bigger game here, with questions of identity, intentions, and legacies...

Join us for a reading and discussion, co-sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research, to celebrate The Theory of Being: Practices for Transforming Self and Communities Across Difference, edited by a research team from the UI College of Education including Sherry K. Watt, Duhita Mahatmya, Milad Mohebali, and Charles Martin-Stanley II. The book presents a state-of-the-art, robust, and adaptable process, the theory of Being, that offers strategies for working across Difference, and...

Legendary film director Werner Herzog will receive FilmScene’s Cinema Savant award and appear in conversation to discuss his life in film. Herzog will visit as part of a five-city U.S. book tour (New York, Boston, Iowa City, Los Angeles, San Francisco), and will read from his soon-to-be-released autobiography, Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir.   The multi-hyphenate polymath Academy Award-nominated director (Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Grizzly Man, Fitzcarraldo, Encounters at...

Join us for an afternoon reading with celebrated novelist Jonathan Lethem, celebrating the release of his latest, Brooklyn Crime Novel. Percival Everett says of Brooklyn Crime Novel: “The levels of mystery here astound. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts and then the parts decide to act alone and challenge the whole. Lethem is not only interrogating the form of the crime novel, but the venture of storytelling itself. All of this while remaining a joy to read. Full of strange...

The Iowa City Book festival presents an afternoon reading of The Unsettled by Writers' Workshop graduate Ayana Mathis, whom Yiyun Li has described as "one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America." "[A] powerful book.” —Marilynne Robinson Mathis’ first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie was a New York Times bestseller, an NPR Best Book of 2013, the second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. and has been translated into sixteen languages. Her nonfiction has been published in...

Join us with the Iowa City Book Festival this Thursday afternoon for a reading of Mindy Mejia's thriller To Catch a Storm.  “Mejia delivers her best work yet in this propulsive, intelligent page-turner. . . Mejia gives Eve and Jonah uncommon depth, which makes their potentially clichéd skeptic/believer dynamic feel surprisingly fresh. . . This indelible thriller has series potential.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)  Mindy Mejia is a CPA and a graduate of the Hamline University MFA program...