Events Archive

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Live from Prairie Lights: Marvin Bell promotional image
Live from Prairie Lights: Marvin Bell
Wednesday, November 6, 2019 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Marvin Bell, who taught poetry for over forty years at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and was Iowa's first poet laureate, will read from Incarnate: The Collected Dead Man Poems.

"Marvin Bell's Dead Man poems should close out any anthology of the twentieth century and open any anthology of this new century's work. They change the game. They insist that we pay a new and different kind of attention." —The Georgia Review

Marvin Bell was born in New York City in 1937 and raised in rural...

Live from Prairie Lights: Regina Porter promotional image
Live from Prairie Lights: Regina Porter
Monday, November 4, 2019 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and award-winning playwright Regina Porter will read from her debut novel, The Travelers.  "In The Travelers, generations of two families--one black and one white--journey across time, race, geography, and the wounds of history with sweeping breadth and disarming intimacy. Porter's debut signals the arrival of a fully formed, singular talent." --Ayana Mathis

Regina Porter was an Iowa Arts Fellow and recipient of a 2017-2018 Rae Armour West Postgraduate...

Witching Hour Festival - Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: Notes on the American Surveillance State promotional image
Witching Hour Festival - Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: Notes on the American Surveillance State
Friday, November 1, 2019 4:00pm to 5:30pm
University of Iowa Main Library

Kerry Howley will read from her forthcoming book about the American surveillance state, Bottom’s Up and The Devil Laughs. The reading will be followed by a Q&A and conversation with Howley.

Kerry Howley is the author of Thrown, a New York Times Notable Book, New York Times Editor’s Choice, and pick for best-of-the-year lists in Time, Salon, Slate, and many other venues. A Contributing Writer at New York Magazine, her work has also appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, New York Times Magazine...

Live from Prairie Lights: David Hamilton
Thursday, October 24, 2019 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

David Hamilton, University of Iowa professor emeritus and former editor of the Iowa Review, will read from A Certain Arc: Essays of Finding My Way

“As one would expect from such a distinguished educator and editor, the prose in this collection is beautifully turned, the intelligence luminous, and the experience and wisdom of a lifetime generously shared: this book is a gift to all literature lovers. But what seems even more striking and rare, in this age of self–absorbed memoir, is the...