New York Times bestselling author and former Prairie Lights bookseller Claire Lombardo will return to Iowa City to read from her newest novel, Same As It Ever Was, which was just released in paperback! New York Times book critic and author, Hamilton Cain, praised Same As It Ever Was in a June 2024 NYT review as a "refashion domestic drama into...

Central Ohio-based author and Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Michelle Herman will read from her newest book, an essay collection called If You Say So. Galileo Press, which published If You Say So and which originated in Iowa City in the 1970s, describes Herman's essays as "true stories about loss and reinvention, longing and loneliness, friendship and community, and...

Poet Steven Leyva will read from his newest collection of poems, The Opposite of Cruelty, and will be joined in conversation by fellow poet Cory Hutchinson-Reuss. "In The Opposite of Cruelty, Steven Leyva’s poems ask readers to see and remember beauty when the world seems to be in ruins, to notice and praise “the industrious cherry // trees...