Lan Samantha Chang, Director of the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and Frances de Pontes Peebles, visiting faculty, will read from their recent work.

Lan Samantha Chang is the author of the award-winning books Hunger and Inheritance, and the novel All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost. Her short stories have been published in The Atlantic and The Best American Short Stories. She is the recipient of Wallace Stegner and Truman Capote fellowships at Stanford University and of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, Princeton University, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  "Lan Samantha Chang sees deeply into her characters, right down to their souls, and she wields her intelligence with the compassion of a master.” —Scott Spencer, author of Endless Love

Frances de Pontes Peebles is the author of the novels The Seamstress and The Air You Breathe. Her books have been translated into ten languages and won the Elle Grand Prix for fiction, the Friends of American Writers Award, and the James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Fellowship. Her second novel, The Air You Breathe, was a Book of the Month Club pick. Born in Pernambuco, Brazil, she is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has received a Fulbright Grant, Brazil’s Sacatar Foundation Fellowship, and was a Teaching Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her short stories and essays have appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories, Zoetrope: All-Story, Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Catapult, and Real Simple. Her novel, The Seamstress, was adapted for film and mini-series on Brazil’s Globo Network.