Renowned Spanish poet Luis Muñoz will read from his debut North American poetry collection, One Moment, and will be joined by one of his translators, Garth Greenwell, and Donika Kelly. Described as "Sweet, surreal, and haunting," the poems in One Moment "examine both the frictions and elusiveness that can occur between self and others...the gentle observation of sunlight like 'golden cookies on the bedspread' as you lie next to a lover. The feeling of solitude rendering you as small and still as a garbanzo bean, yearning as much for water and light as to continue being left alone" (simonandschuster.com). Bestselling poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar praises One Moment by saying, "It’s thrilling to encounter poetry this fresh, this undeniable," and adds, "No one today sounds like this."

Luis Muñoz is the author of seven books of poetry, including Vecindad. He has received the Ciudad de Córdoba, Generación del 27, and Ojo Crítico prizes, among others. He divides his time between Madrid and Iowa City, where he directs the Spanish-language creative writing MFA program at the University of Iowa.

Garth Greenwell is the author of three books of fiction, most recently Small Rain, which won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His first novel, What Belongs to You, won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second book, Cleanness, was a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for several awards, including the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, and France’s Prix Sade.

Donika Kelly is the author of the chapbook Aviarium and the full-length poetry collections The Renunciations (Graywolf), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry, Bestiary (Graywolf), the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and The Natural Order of Things (Graywolf, 2025). Kelly’s poetry has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, and longlisted for the National Book Award. A Cave Canem graduate fellow, National Endowment for the Arts fellow, and founding member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she has also received a Lannan Residency Fellowship, and a summer workshop fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center. She earned her BA in English from Southern Arkansas University, an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and elsewhere.

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