Events Archive

Current Semester

Summer Faculty Reading: Jamel Brinkley and James Han Mattson

Wednesday, May 27, 2026 7:00pm

Dey House

Join us for a summer faculty reading:

Jamel Brinkley is the author of Witness: Stories (2023, Farrar, Straus and Giroux/4th Estate), winner of the Maya Angelou Book Award, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. A Lucky Man: Stories (2018, Graywolf Press) was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and winner of a PEN Oakland Award and...

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop

Sunday, May 24, 2026 2:30pm to 4:15pm

Stanley Museum of Art

Join us monthly to generate new creative writing inspired by works in the Stanley collection. Each session will be led by a different talented writer from our area, who will be offering a new prompt and a new approach to ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by visual art). Bring your own notebook and pencil or computer and leave with the beginning of a newly written piece.

Co-sponsored by Iowa City Poetry. Teen and adult writers in all genres are welcome.

Write at the Stanley meets every fourth...

Live from Prairie Lights | Uchenna Awoke in conversation with Reyumeh Ejue - "A Seige of Owls"

Monday, May 11, 2026 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Prairie Lights Books

Uchenna Awoke will read from his new novel, A Siege of Owls, and will be joined in conversation with Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate, Reyumeh Ejue. Described as "An urgent and unforgettable work of magical realism following a young man coming of age in rural West Africa as he bears witness to the violence, upheaval, and hope in a rapidly changing society," A Siege of Owls is praised by The Malvern Observer as "a deeply human, urgent, and earnest story," while Chimezie Chika, author of Afrocritik, says: "A Siege of Owls is a masterpiece . . . If mythmaking—that is, mythmaking the becoming or unbecoming of our country—is Awoke’s goal in writing this novel, he immensely succeeds in mythologising the aggressive extremities of our times."

Live from Prairie Lights | Anna Barker in conversation with DK Nnuro - "13 Notes from Napoleon, Iowa: Musings on the Edge of the French Empire"

Tuesday, May 5, 2026 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Prairie Lights Books

University of Iowa professor Anna Barker will read from her book, 13 Notes from Napoleon, Iowa: Musings on the Edge of the French Empire, and will be joined in conversation by Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate, DK Nnuro.

Between 1800 and 1803 the future state of Iowa was ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of the French Republic. 13 Notes from Napoleon, Iowa: Musings on the Edge of the French Empire illuminates some aspects of Iowa’s French past, such as cities named after the Napoleonic battles of Marengo and Waterloo, and explains the mystery of Iowa’s distinctly French-looking flag. Along the way, Dr. Barker muses on other Napoleon-related matters, such as Empire waist gowns, Goethe's and Byron's Bonapartism, the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, the Congress of Vienna, and to what extent Europe's current internal contradictions have been impacted by its Napoleonic past.