Prairie Lights

Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program alum and former instructor Kerry Howley will read from her new book, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State.  “In this fascinating dispatch from the height of the surveillance age, Howley expands on her New York magazine profile of Reality Winner, the intelligence specialist who leaked classified reports on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election… Based on extensive interviews with Winner, her family, and her friends, and enriched by incisive character sketches of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and other whistleblowers, Howley reveals how the gravest threat to the national security state has become ‘ideological, morally serious twentysomethings finding themselves as they sifted through secrets their younger selves had promised to keep.’ Witty, humane, and fiercely intelligent, this is a striking critique of a world intent on ‘burying itself’ in information.” —Publishers Weekly
Kerry Howley is a feature writer at New York magazine and the author of Thrown, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and pick for best-of-the-year lists including Time, Salon, and Slate. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Best American Sportswriting, The New York Times Magazine, and Harper’s.She lives in Los Angeles.
Rachel Yoder is the author of the novel Nightbitch. She is a graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program and also holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona. She lives in Iowa City.