Writers' Workshop alum Joe Fassler will read from his new novel, The Sky Was Ours. "The Sky Was Ours is an immersive fever dream of a novel, beautifully written and boldly imagined. It's a dark fairy tale with a gripping human pulse; attuned to global crisis but also rooted deeply in the psyches of its characters, animated by their grief and most of all by their longing--longing for wonder, escape, transcendence, hope for our profit-rotted world; a longing that soars through these pages with an energy and tenderness utterly its own." —Leslie Jamison

Joe Fassler is a writer and editor based in Denver, Colorado. His fiction has appeared in The Boston Review and Electric Literature. In 2013, Fassler started The Atlantic's "By Heart" series, in which he interviewed authors — including Stephen King, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amy Tan, Khaled Hosseini, Carmen Maria Machado, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and more — about the literature that shaped their lives and work. That led to editing Light the Dark, a book-length collection that included favorites from "By Heart" alongside new contributions. Fassler's nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Guardian, Longreads, and The Best American Food Writing. Fassler currently teaches writing at Vermont's Sterling College. The Sky Was Ours is his first novel.

Readings at Prairie Lights are sponsored by the Writing University at the University of Iowa.