Iowa Writers’ Workshop alum Madeline McDonnell will read from her newest novel, Lonesome Ballroom, and will be joined in conversation with fellow Writers’ Workshop alum and current director of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, Stephen Lovely. Set in a bar in the early-aughts and featuring a far-ranging conversation between patron/protagonist Betty Block and bartender Lizzie about everything from “gender’s relationship to popular aesthetics that swirls from ancient epics to turn-of-the-millennium reality shows, mid-century melodramas to neo-noir car chases, beauteous battle scenes to boy-next-door meet-cutes” (rescuepress.co), Lonesome Ballroom is praised by Leni Zumas as a “gleaming, teeming symphony of a novel” and by Amber Dermont, who says, “Lonesome Ballroom is a beguiling conspiracy of beauty” and adds, “Forgive me, did I say novel, I mean bejeweled hand grenade.”

Madeline McDonnell is the author of three books of fiction: Lonesome Ballroom, Penny, n., and There Is Something Inside, It Wants To Get Out. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow, and has taught creative writing, literature, and composition courses at many places, most recently the MFA program at Portland State University. She lives in Oregon with her family.

Stephen Lovely has been the Director of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio since 2005. He has led over 30 sessions of the program and hosted more than 2000 students. Stephen attended Kenyon College, where he majored in English, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied with Deborah Eisenberg, Margot Livesey, Ethan Canin, and Frank Conroy. His first novel, Irreplaceable, was published by Hyperion/Voice in 2009 and translated into German, Dutch, and Chinese. Irreplaceable received the Dana Award for the Novel and a James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award. Stephen currently lives in Iowa City with his wife and several dogs and cats.  He is working on a second novel.