The Iowa City Book Festival presents Writers' Workshop graduate Eskor David Johnson, who will read from his debut novel Pay As You Go.  “A madcap odyssey through the hellscape that is the metropolis of the near future. […] Like Dante, Slide wanders in circles, soaking in weirdness, tragedies, and occasional flashes of beauty. And like Joyce, Johnson builds a world that, for all its improbabilities, is recognizable. […] An inventive, beautifully written debut that will leave readers wanting more...

Join us with the Iowa City Book Festival this Thursday morning for a reading of Whalefall, with Iowa's own Daniel Kraus.  "GRAVITY meets 127 HOURS at sea in Daniel Kraus 's astounding new book Whalefall. Easily one of my favorite novels of the year." —Gillian Flynn “A crazy, and crazily enjoyable, beat-the-clock adventure story about fathers, sons, guilt and the mysteries of the sea . . . [Kraus] brings the rigor of a scientist and the sensibility of a poet to his descriptions of the undersea...

Hear Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate, renowned novelist, and Oscar award-winning screenwriter John Irving (67MFA) read from his latest novel, The Last Chairlift, during this special evening at Hancher Auditorium, which will include a chat between the author and Workshop Director Lan Samantha Chang. Irving studied under writer Kurt Vonnegut at Iowa and served as an Iowa Writers’ Workshop instructor from 1972 to 1975. While on campus, the avid wrestler struck up a lifelong friendship with famed...

Join us with the Iowa City Book Festival at the Old Capital Museum, Senate Chamber at 6:20 p.m. for Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: “Translation! Ever New, Ever Elusive” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak will give the inaugural Weissbort-Spivak Lecture in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the MFA in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa.

The Iowa City Book Festival presents Writers' Workshop faculty member Tracie Morris, who will share her latest poetry collection, Human/Nature.  "Tracie Morris is the genius poet of the double-dutch: crafted, elegant, urgent, playful, fun, and musically timed. In human/nature poems, Morris dismantles gentrification, climate violence, space/history travel, ancestry, and inspires us to look at our relationship to what we call 'nature,' and what we deem 'human.' Our memories are stirred toward ice...

2023 is the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio—the first collected edition of his works, and the first publication ever of plays including Macbeth and The Tempest. Why are we still reading and performing his works all these years later? How do we situate Shakespeare’s plays in a contemporary context? Join us for a roundtable discussion on Shakespeare in the 21st century. At this conversational panel, scholars will discuss Shakespeare in the context of race, prisons, and contemporary...

Coralville Public Library Special afternoon event at the Coralville Public Library! The Iowa City Book Festival presents author Marta McDowell, who will talk about her new book, Gardening Can Be Murder: How Poisonous Poppies, Sinister Shovels, and Grim Gardens Have Inspired Mystery Writers. "What could be more intriguing than a murder in the garden? In her newest book, Marta McDowell takes us on a delightfully diabolical romp through the role of horticulture in crime fiction. From deadly seeds...

The Writers' Workshop presents a Q&A with Garth Greenwell. Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over 50 publications in nine countries, and is being...

The Writers' Workshop presents a Q&A with Vauhini Vara.  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 Department of English welcomes Ida Cordelia Beam Speaker, Jane Smiley, to speak on Thursday, Oct. 5 at 7 p.m. Jane is a Pulitzer-Prize winning author and alumni of the University of Iowa's Department of English. A reception will follow. Her visit is made possible with the support of the Provost's office and the Department of English.

Join us for an evening with Writers’ Workshop graduates and poets Michael Dumanis and Johannes Göransson. Jericho Brown calls Michael Dumanis’s Creature “a brilliant book, a gift that fills needs we didn’t know we needed. This book is a word-drunk movement. I am so envious that I didn’t write it.” Michael Dumanis is the author of the poetry collections Creature (Four Way Books, 2023) and My Soviet Union (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. Born in...

Kaveh Akbar will read from his edited anthology, The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse:110 Poets on the Divine. He will be joined in conversation by IWP Director and poet, Christopher Merrill. This rich and surprising anthology is a holistic, global survey of a lyric conversation about the divine. These works range from The Epic of Gilgamesh through canonical figures like Blake, Dickinson and Tagore, alongside lesser-anthologized, diverse poets going up to the present day. Together they show the breathtaking multiplicity of ways humanity has responded to the spiritual, across place and time. Kaveh Akbar's poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. His first novel, Martyr, is forthcoming in 2024. He teaches at the University of Iowa and lives in Iowa City.

The Truman Capote Award Ceremony will take place at 4 p.m. Oct. 4 in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber. The event will feature remarks by the winner and a reception in the Old Capitol Museum. Both events are open to the public. R.A. Judy, professor of critical and cultural studies at the University of Pittsburgh, has been selected by the University of Iowa as the 2023 recipient of the Truman Capote Literary Trust Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin. To subscribe to a weekly...

Writers' Workshop graduate Juliana Lamy will read from her new short story collection, You Were Watching From the Sand. She will be joined in conversation by Rasheeda Saka. "Every sentence Juliana Lamy writes is like a match being struck. Not many authors debut with her clarity of vision, inventiveness, and verbal agility, and I would wager almost anything that You Were Watching from the Sand will mark only the first chapter in an important body of work." - Kevin Brockmeier Juliana Lamy is a...

Track Zero is The Englert's new concert series that presents burgeoning, diverse, and boundary-pushing artists in Iowa City. Kassa Overall is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap in unmapped directions. On his first two studio albums Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz and I Think I'm Good, Kassa layered virtuosic drumming, meticulous production techniques, and...

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies & the Office of the Vice President for Research present Ready, Set, Flow: How to Make the Most of Your Writing Time This Fall, a daylong online writing retreat for faculty, academic staff, and graduate students across the UI, led by Michelle Boyd, PhD, of InkWell Academic Writing Retreats. This full-day online writing retreat offers an opportunity to set up your fall writing plans. You'll learn how to quickly clarify what needs to be done, what to do...

Join us for the International Writing Program's Prairie Lights Reading Series this Sunday to hear readings by two 2023 Fall Residency writers and one University of Iowa MFA student. Tammy Lai-Ming Ho (poet, scholar, editor, translator; Hong Kong) is the author of a story collection, an academic monograph on neo-Victorian cannibalism and two volumes of poetry; a third volume will appear in 2024. She is the editor-in-chief of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, the English-language editor at Voice &...

Mark your calendars to take part in our 100-Word Microstory Contest—a free online writing competition for a variety of age groups. You don't have to be an Iowa Writers' Workshop grad—or even have participated in a flash writing contest before—to join in the fun. Just create a story in 100 words or less that uses one of two specific writing prompts. We will announce the writing prompts on our website on Monday, July 10, 2023, at 9 a.m. CDT. Learn more: https://www.foriowa.org/write-now...

A virtual author event with Kevin Wilson.

Director of Translation Programs Aron Aji will read from his new translation of The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales, by Ferit Edgü, published by New York Review of Books. “A stark and ferocious love letter to a forgotten people, in a gorgeous translation that is utterly true to the wounded dreamscapes of the original. To read these pages is to be there, swept by mountain snows and the cruel winds of politics, undone by harsh beauty and the endless tragedy unfolding.” —Maureen Freely Ferit Edgü is...

Learn how the Fall 2022 Main Library Gallery exhibit came to be, hear about the history of Iowa’s renowned International Writing Program, and discover more about the curators’ favorite items from the archives – including things that didn’t quite make the cut for exhibition.

Local Libraries LIT (Listen, Initiate, Talk), a collaboration between Johnson County libraries, will welcome author Ann Patchett on Thursday, Oct. 27 at 6:30 p.m. for a free online reading and conversation. This is the sixth virtual author event in the series offered by public libraries in Johnson County, as well as the University of Iowa Libraries and Kirkwood Community College Library - Iowa City Campus with support from The Tuesday Agency. Exciting News! Ann Patchett has asked her dear...

Please join us for a reading and conversation with Mark Prins to celebrate the release of his new book The Latinist. He will be joined in conversation with author Margot Livesey. To join this virtual event, register here. Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest and Good Company, says of the book "Within the first few pages of this book, I knew I was in the hands of a masterful storyteller. The Latinist is imaginative, propulsive, and wildly intelligent. What a joy to encounter a thrilling...

The MFA in Spanish Creative Writing presents the second volume of the collection Movimiento perpetuo. The bilingüal edition titled  Casa vacía / Empty house  is an anthology that brings together the remarkable writing of previous MFA students, Christian de León, Juan Díaz Ortiz,  Leticia Fernández-Fontecha,  and Yamila Transtenvot. Current MFA students, Gabriela Román, Arturo Camacho, Camila de Urioste and Lara Dopazo will interview the authors about their creative processes. Register for this...

The University of Iowa Libraries is proud to welcome author Laura Gellott to campus to discuss her recent book, Helen Perry Curtis and the European Trip of a Lifetime. Laura will be available following her talk for book signing during a light reception between 3:30 PM and 5:00 PM. Register for the virtual option here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oSnVHr0kSVmpCUH_M6xGwA Can a book read in childhood be the inspiration for a lifetime of teaching and European travel? Helen Perry...