Matthew Neill Null is a recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Mary McCarthy Prize, the O. Henry Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Michener–Copernicus Society of America Award. His stories appear in The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, Ecotone, Oxford American, Ploughshares, Electric Literature, PEN /O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, and The Best American Mystery Stories. A native of West Virginia...

Writers' Workshop graduate Tramaine Suubi will read from their newest poetry collection, Stages, and will be joined in conversation with poet and Writers' Workshop graduate Margaret Yapp. Described as an inspiration "by the evolution of our brightest star," Stages "offers poems alluding to the history of how it came to be and its effects on each human life...Readers will discover poems exploring everything from the gimmicks of capitalism to the false promises of tranquility" (tramainesuubi.com...

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. In 2018, The New York...

Join us for a special Book Matters celebrating acclaimed author Jamel Brinkley, recipient of a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2022–2023 Rome Prize in Literature.

Provost Kevin Kregel will recognize Brinkley for his external awards. Brinkley will read a selection from his work and then join Stephen Lovely, novelist and director of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, for conversation and audience Q&A.

“Jamel Brinkley is one of the best story writers we have…Read everything this man writes, and know...