Is there a right time to get your MFA? This hour will feature a panel of graduates of the Iowa Writers' Workshop who came to the program at different ages, some earlier in life, others having already established lives, families, and careers. Panelists will talk and answer questions about the benefits and challenges of attending graduate school earlier or later in life, what it was like to be in workshop, what it was like to manage school and family, and what the MFA experience offered them in...

Thomas Fox Averill will read from his novel Found Documents from the Life of Nell Johnson Doerr. Told entirely through fictional journals, letters, photos, drawings, notes, and clippings, Found Documents follows Nell’s life in Lawrence, Kansas, between 1854 and 1889, where she first discovers fossils her house’s foundation.   “Averill has a remarkable facility for expressing wisdom in the simplest of language. Indeed, sincerity—in both language and feeling—is a signature feature of this unique...

Writers’ Workshop graduate Tom Macher will read from his memoir, Halfway, about his time spent in boys’ homes and halfway houses as a teen. “In Tom Macher’s tough new memoir, halfway is a condition of the heart and soul as much as it is a refuge for wayward boys… Many of the boys we meet along the way don’t make it, but one of them endures, and a lone voice survives, as Tom Macher returns to tell this beautiful tale.” —Charles d’Ambrosio Tom Macher grew up in Georgia, New York, and California...

Writers’ Workshop graduate Anjali Sachdeva will read from her short story collection All the Names They Used for God.   “Each one provides a haiku-esque glimpse into the infinite mind of an individual while revealing how the seeming trivialities of life can reverberate with meaning. Throughout, characters grapple with predetermination as they experience the brutal clash between expectation and reality.” —Michael Valinsky Anjali Sachdeva's fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, Th...