Please join us for a reading and conversation with Rebecca Rukeyser in celebration of the release of her book The Seaplane on Final Approach. She will be joined in conversation by Rachel Yoder.

Rebecca Rukeyser is the recipient of the inaugural Berlin Senate grant for non-German literature. Her fiction has appeared in such publications as ZYZZYVA, The Massachusetts Review, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She earned her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches fiction...

Please join us for a reading and conversation with Kimberly Johnson in celebration of the release of her book Fatal. She will also read from Still Life, a book of poetry by her late husband, Jay Hopler.

Kimberly Johnson is a poet, translator, and literary critic. Her poetry, translations, and scholarly essays have appeared widely in publications including The New Yorker, Slate, The Iowa Review, Milton Quarterly, and Modern Philology. Recipient of grants and fellowships from the John Simon...

Sit in on a one-of-a-kind conversation with Iowa Writers’ Workshop director and renowned novelist Lan Samantha Chang (93MFA), who will chat with host Charity Nebbe, of Iowa Public Radio’s Talk of Iowa, and read from her most recent book, The Family Chao. Oprah Daily Insider recognized Chang as one of eight women writers changing the world—and The Family Chao appeared on Barack Obama’s 2022 Summer Reading List.

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Prairie Lights Bookstore will sell copies of The Family Chao beforeh...

Jerald Walker, author of the 2020 National Book Award finalist How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, will discuss that work and more.

For the black community, Jerald Walker asserts in How to Make a Slave, “anger is often a prelude to a joke, as there is broad understanding that the triumph over this destructive emotion lay in finding its punchline.” It is on the knife’s edge between fury and farce that the essays in this exquisite collection balance. Whether confronting the medical profession’s...