Events Archive

Current Semester

Live from Prairie Lights | Amie Barrodale in conversation with Diane Vadino - 'Trip' promotional image
Live from Prairie Lights | Amie Barrodale in conversation with Diane Vadino - 'Trip'
Thursday, September 4, 2025 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Amie Barrodale will discuss her newest book, a novel called Trip, with Diane Vadino. Described by Farrar, Straus and Giroux as "an absurd, profound and irresistibly entertaining odyssey," Trip follows a mother named Sandra who, three days after her unexpected death, discovers her son Anthony has run away from a troubled youth center in the American desert, and only she knows where he is and how to keep him from joining her in death too soon. Mary Gaitskill praises Barrodale as "witty, soulful...

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop promotional image
Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop
Sunday, August 31, 2025 2:30pm to 4:15pm
Stanley Museum of Art

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop is back for the Fall Semester!

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...

Live from Prairie Lights | C. Mallon in conv with Kevin Brockmeier - 'Dogs' promotional image
Live from Prairie Lights | C. Mallon in conv with Kevin Brockmeier - 'Dogs'
Wednesday, August 27, 2025 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Iowa Writers' Workshop alum C. Mallon will read from her debut novel, Dogs, and will be joined in conversation by visiting Iowa Writers' Workshop instructor, Kevin Brockmeier. Described by Simon and Schuster as a story that "traces the fallout of one catastrophic night in the lives of five high school wrestlers, asking what can survive in the blast radius of latent trauma and violence," Dogs is praised by Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead, as "equal parts scouring and...

Live from Prairie Lights | Anna Bruno in conversation with Claire Lombardo - 'Fine Young People' promotional image
Live from Prairie Lights | Anna Bruno in conversation with Claire Lombardo - 'Fine Young People'
Tuesday, July 29, 2025 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Iowa Writers' Workshop alum and current University of Iowa instructor Anna Bruno will read from her newest novel, Fine Young People, and will be joined in conversation with bestselling author and former Prairie Lights bookseller, Claire Lombardo. Described by publisher Algonquin Books as the story of a high-school senior investigating the death of a star hockey player at her elite Jesuit school, which uncovers "the rot" within the institution as well as the truth of her own past, Fine Young...