Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Abby Geni will read from her newest short story collection, The Body Farm. Elizabeth Niarchos Neukirch of The Chicago Review of Books calls The Body Farm "a gripping collection of stories that take an empathetic and unflinching look at the horrors and joys of inhabiting our bodies" and goes on to praise it as "stories [that] help us relate with her characters, our own bodies, and the natural world that surrounds us outside her lyrical pages" (chireviewofbooks.com). Jeffrey Condran of The Pittsburgh-Post Gazette also praises The Body Farm: "Abby Geni's new short story collection...dissects physical abuse, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, illness and murder — and holds the same dualistic fascination ... In addition to Geni's dramatic writing, what really makes these stories sing, despite the often-difficult subject matter, is the sheer variety of home truths to be acknowledged about the body and our moment-to-moment consciousness, our very perception of ourselves, and the world. These are perhaps concepts we might 'know,' but perhaps rarely fully appreciate. The Body Farm is a truly remarkable collection."

Abby Geni is the author of the novels The Wildlands and The Lightkeepers and the short story collections The Last Animal and The Body Farm. Her books have been translated into seven languages and have won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award and the Chicago Review of Books Awards, among other honors. Her short stories have won the Glimmer Train Fiction Open and the Chautauqua Contest, and her stories and essays have been published or reprinted in dozens of literary magazines, including Best American Mystery and Suspense, ​The Missouri Review, Epoch, Ninth Letter, and New Stories from the Midwest. Geni is a faculty member at StoryStudio Chicago and frequent Visiting Associate Professor of Fiction at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

_{[Photo by CF Watkins]}

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Readings at Prairie Lights are sponsored by the Writing University.}