Atmosphere Press authors Mark Dickinson and Kyle McCord will read from Replacement Parts and Reunion of the Good Weather Suicide Cult .  Marc Dickinson will read from his linked short story collection, Replacement Parts. “There are no holds barred in Marc Dickinson’s rich and fearless collection of stories. He dives deep in America’s dark soul—the addictions, the detentions, the diseases,...

Writers' Workshop alum Stuart Nadler will read from his newest novel, Rooms for Vanishing, which is a "prismatic, mind-bending family epic about the splintering of a Jewish family from Vienna—exploring the weight of exile and how grief twists our sense of the impossible" (stuartnadler.net). Kirkus Reviews describes Rooms for Vanishing as "beautifully written," while Sabrina Orah Mark, author...

Middle-grade author H.M. Bouwman will read from her newest novel, Scattergood, which features a thirteen-year-old protagonist named Peggy who witnesses numerous changes in her small Iowa farm community (West Branch) in 1941. Writers' Workshop alum Laurel Snyder wrote in her New York Times Book Review of Scattergood that it's "...a brave, beautiful book, wise enough to reach for something beyond...

Scholar and essayist Samira Mehta will read from her book of blended memoir, cultural criticism, and theory, The Racism of People Who Love You. She will be joined in conversation by Ari Ariel.  What Kirkus Reviews describes as "Thoughtful meditations on identity" and what Simran Jeet Singh, author of The Light We Give, describes as "insightful, provocative,...

Join us for a special 6pm poetry and translation event co-sponsored by the University of Iowa Asian Studies department!  Mary Jo Bang, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and her fellow poet and translator, Yuki Tanaka will present the first collection in English of twentieth century Japanese surrealist poet Shuzo Takiguchi, A Kiss for...

Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program alum Laura Julier will read from her River Teeth Nonfiction Prize-winning debut memoir, Off Izaak Walton Road, and will be joined in conversation with author Lori Erickson. "In this lyric memoir, Laura Julier takes us on a journey through long-held feelings of loss and grief—experienced through various landscapes—until she lands in a...

Poets GC Waldrep and Karen An-Hwei Lee will read from their newest collections, Beautiful Immunity and The Opening Ritual. GC Waldrep’s The Opening Ritual is described by bestselling author and novelist Kaveh Akbar as “the kind of furiously curious, unabashedly ambitious poetry book I want to show everyone, to prove such books can still be written.” G.C. Waldrep was born...

Bestselling author and Iowa Writers’ Workshop alum Curtis Sittenfeld will read from her newest book and second story collection, Show, Don’t Tell. Publishers’ Weekly describes Show, Don’t Tell as “Witty . . . In one sparkling comedy of manners after another, documents with a clear and affectionate eye how tiny prejudices and blind spots lead her protagonists astray,”...

Iowa Writers’ Workshop Poetry alum Alyssa Perry and Rescue Press poet Daisy Atterbury will read from their new books, Oily Doily, and The Kármán Line. Razor-edged, stagger-rhymed, Oily Doily is a diamond saw. Its music is intricate and remorseless as its subject: empire, centuries of bourgeois kitsch, 80s flicks, tech strip - mining our curiosity, sympathy, and desire for...