Events Archive

Current Semester

Summer Faculty Reading: Ada Zhang and Tom Drury promotional image
Summer Faculty Reading: Ada Zhang and Tom Drury
Wednesday, July 8, 2026 7:00pm
Glenn Schaeffer Library

Join us for a reading by Workshop summer faculty:

Ada Zhang's short stories have appeared in A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. The Sorrows of Others, her first story collection, was published by A Public Space Books. She is a 2024 Whiting Award Winner in Fiction and 2023 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree.

Tom Drury is the author of Pacific, The End of Vandalism, Hunts in Dreams, The Driftless Area, and The Black Brook. His novels have been translated...

Live from Prairie Lights | Karen Parkman - 'The Jills'
Monday, June 22, 2026 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Karen Parkman will read from her new novel, The Jills. Listed by both PEOPLE Magazine and CrimeReads as a "best book of February," The Jills is praised by Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists, as "a nuanced, incisive exploration of the world of NFL cheerleading—and the complex power of sisterhood, both familial and chosen," while Andrea Bartz, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Ferry Out and We Were Never Here, says:...

Summer Faculty Reading: Jamel Brinkley and James Han Mattson promotional image
Summer Faculty Reading: Jamel Brinkley and James Han Mattson
Wednesday, May 27, 2026 7:00pm
Dey House

Join us for a reading by Workshop summer faculty:

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...

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop promotional image
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...