Events Calendar

Apr 3, 2025

7:00 PM

Come to Prairie Lights Books for a special Darwin Day reading by Chris Jones, author of The Swine Republic. Published in 2023 by local publisher Ice Cube Press and named a 2024 "Great Reads from Great Places" book by the Library of Congress, The Swine Republic provides extensive research and reportage on the truth behind Iowa's infamously poor water quality, which you "...won't get ... from Iowa’s agricultural and political leaders." (icecubepress.com) Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nat...

Apr 4, 2025

3:00 PM

Literary Agent William Callahan will be giving a Publishing Q&A at the Nonfiction Writing House on Friday, April 4 at 3 p.m. William Callahan is an Inkwell Management agent and editor based in New York City. He is responsible for representing and managing the careers of a diverse roster of authors and literary talents. Prior to his current role, Callahan received his degree from the University of Iowa, where he honed his skills and passion for the publishing industry. Join us at the Nonfict...

Apr 5, 2025

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Join us for four discussions of Toni Morrison's Beloved and the exhibition it's a fine thing, led by the Stanley’s curator of special projects and author of What Napoleon Could Not Do, Derek (DK) Nnuro. Register for each session by clicking the dates below, capped at 30 participants:  Feb. 15 (Pages 1 - 59) March 8 (Pages 60 - 195) April 5 (Pages 199 - 277) May 10 (Pages 281 - 324) Iowa City is one of 62 communities nationwide participating in the 2023-2024 NEA Big Read. From Februa...

Apr 5, 2025

3:00 PM

Torrey Peters, alum of the Nonfiction Writing Program will read from her new book Stag Dance at Prairie Lights Books on Saturday, April 5 at 3 p.m. Reception to follow - 4:30pm at The Nonfiction Writing House - 530 N. Clinton St., Iowa City. Torrey Peters, NWP 2009, will publish Stag Dance: A Novel and Stories, with Penguin Random House in March 2025.

Apr 9, 2025

7:00 PM

Chris Offutt will read from his new novel, The Reluctant Sheriff. Chris Offutt grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, population 200, a former mining town in the Appalachian hills. His books include Shifty's Boys, The Killing Hills, Country Dark, Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods, The Good Brother, The Same River Twice, No Heroes, and My Father the Pornographer. He wrote and produced scripts for True Blood, Weeds, and Treme.  His television work was nominated for an Emmy. His work is in many ant...

Apr 11, 2025

7:00 PM

Writers' Workshop alum, Jonathan Thirkield will read from his latest book, Infinity Pool. Jonathan Thirkield's work explores the boundaries between the human language systems of poetry and code—as forms of expression and as structural models for being. His first collection of poetry, The Waker's Corridor, won the 2008 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets. His newest collection, Infinity Pool, was published by the University of Chicago Press' Phoenix Poets series in September ...

Apr 15, 2025

4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

Join the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Office of the Provost as we celebrate faculty and staff who have published books since spring 2023. University leadership will make remarks at 4:30 p.m., followed by short readings by scholars who have recently authored books: Sarah E. Bond, associate professor in the Department of History, and the author of Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire (Yale University Press, 2025) Jill Wieber Lens, Dorothy M. Willie...

Apr 17, 2025

2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Nathan Brown will be presenting. Nathan Brown is Professor of English and Canada Research Chair in Poetics at Concordia University, Montreal, where he directs the Centre for Expanded Poetics. He is the author of Baudelaire's Shadow: An Essay on Poetic Determination (MaMa, 2021); Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique (Fordham, 2021); and The Limits of Fabrication: Materials Science, Materialist Poetics (Fordham, 2017). His translation of Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil wa...

Apr 17, 2025

7:00 PM

Sanjena Sathian will read from her new novel, Goddess Complex, joined in conversation by Ren Arcamone. Sanjena Sathian is the author of Goddess Complex, published by Penguin Press, and the critically acclaimed novel Gold Diggers, which was named a Top 10 Best Book of 2021 by the Washington Post and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. It won the Townsend Prize for Fiction. Her short fiction appears in The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, Conjunctions, One St...

Apr 22, 2025

4:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Join the University of Iowa Libraries and the Department of French and Italian for a special event celebrating the impact of French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé.   Experience his groundbreaking poem “Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (A Roll of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance)” read in both French and English by Rosemarie Scullion and Emily Wieder. Then, learn more through a lecture by Roxanna Curto about Mallarmé’s trajectory from a writer of structured poems influenced by C...

Apr 25, 2025

7:00 PM

Writers' Workshop alum, Michelle Herman will read from her latest book, If You Say So. Michelle Herman's newest book, If You Say So, an essay collection, will be out in spring 2025. The author of nine previous books — the novels Missing, Dog, Devotion, and, most recently, Close-Up; the story collection A New and Glorious Life; three earlier collections of essays, The Middle of Everything, Stories We Tell Ourselves, and Like A Song; and a book for children, A Girl’s Guide to Life — she taugh...

May 2, 2025

7:00 PM

Austin Araujo, Grad Student at the Nonfiction Writing Program, will read from his new book At the Park on the Edge of the Country with Patrycja Humienik at Prairie Lights Books on Friday, May 2 at 7 p.m.  

May 10, 2025

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Join us for four discussions of Toni Morrison's Beloved and the exhibition it's a fine thing, led by the Stanley’s curator of special projects and author of What Napoleon Could Not Do, Derek (DK) Nnuro. Register for each session by clicking the dates below, capped at 30 participants:  Feb. 15 (Pages 1 - 59) March 8 (Pages 60 - 195) April 5 (Pages 199 - 277) May 10 (Pages 281 - 324) Iowa City is one of 62 communities nationwide participating in the 2023-2024 NEA Big Read. From Februa...