Events Archive

Current Semester

Live from Prairie Lights | CA Conrad - 'Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return' promotional image
Live from Prairie Lights | CA Conrad - 'Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return'
Thursday, September 25, 2025 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Poet CA Conrad will read from their new book from Wave Books, Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return. Anne Boyer says in a New York Times review: "How are we to believe in Earth if we can’t believe in the Heavens? In the plodding directionlessness of the present, we are lost without the astral maps. I want to point out too CAConrad’s signature care for the visual impact of the poem. The disciplined shaping means that the poetic line here not only carries sound and sentiment but builds toward a...

Iowa City Public Library | Elin Hilderbrand - 'The Academy,' in conversation with Lan Samantha Chang promotional image
Iowa City Public Library | Elin Hilderbrand - 'The Academy,' in conversation with Lan Samantha Chang
Wednesday, September 24, 2025 7:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

Writers' Workshop alum Elin Hilderbrand will read from her newest book, The Academy, and will be joined in conversation with current Writers' Workshop director, Lan Samantha Chang. Described as an "irresistible, deliciously scandalous story of one drama-filled year at a New England boarding school," The Academy was co-written by Elin's daughter Shelby Cunningham (who will not be present) and is praised on Goodreads: "Ever since reading Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld I’ve been hoping to find another...

Live from Prairie Lights | Adedayo Agarau in conv with Othuke Umukoro - 'The Years of Blood' promotional image
Live from Prairie Lights | Adedayo Agarau in conv with Othuke Umukoro - 'The Years of Blood'
Tuesday, September 23, 2025 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Writers' Workshop graduate Adedayo Agarau will read from The Years of Blood, winner of the Poetic Justice Institute Editor’s Prize for BIPOC Writers (Fordham University Press, Fall 2025), and will be joined in conversation with fellow WW graduate, Othuke Umukoro. Remica Bingham-Risher says of The Years of Blood: "Evil is a question for God and beauty emerges despite what the politicians have ruined...In this harrowing collection, Agarau shapes and sifts through shadow until light treads steadily...

Text and Textures: Women Creating Books with Bite - A conversation with Pervin Saket & Diane Vadino promotional image
Text and Textures: Women Creating Books with Bite - A conversation with Pervin Saket & Diane Vadino
Monday, September 22, 2025 5:30pm
Shambaugh House

Text and Textures: Women Creating Books with Bite.

A conversation with Obermann International Fellow Pervin Saket & Diane Vadino led by Devanshi Khetarpal.

Co-sponsored by the International Writing Program and the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.

Free and open to all!