Prairie Lights Bookstore

Please join us for a reading and conversation with Mike Meginnis to celebrate the release of his novel Drowning Practice . He will be joined in conversation by LaTanya McQueen.

Matt Bell, author of Appleseed, says “Drowning Practice is the best new novel I’ve read in ages. Its heroines Mott and Lyd are surprising and compelling, a daughter and mother not merely surviving the end of their world but determined to make something new before it comes. So many apocalypses diminish the world, robbing it of its glories: here Mike Meginnis sets out to restore its wonder. In doing so, he’s gifted us a novel of haunting grace and deep, difficult love, a story I don’t believe I’ll ever forget.”

Mike Meginnis is the author of Fat Man and Little Boy. His fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2012, Unstuck, The Collagist, PANK, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and many other outlets. He lives and works in Iowa City.

LaTanya McQueen is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She is the author of two books—the essay collection And It Begins Like This and the novel When the Reckoning Comes. She received her MFA from Emerson College, her PhD from the University of Missouri, was the 2017-2018 Robert P. Dana Emerging Writer Fellow at Cornell College, and is an Assistant Professor at Coe College. She is also the CNF Editor for Gigantic Sequins, the Associate Editor for Story Magazine, and is on the board for Iowa City’s UNESCO City of Literature