Upcoming Events

Upcoming Events

Live from Prairie Lights | Carrie Olivia Adams & Nathan Hoks in conversation with Danielle Wheeler

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Carrie Olivia Adams will read from her new poetry collection, The Book of Marys and Glaciers, and Nathan Hoks will read from his new paperback edition of his poetry collection, Moony Days of Being. They will be joined in conversation with Danielle Wheeler.

Described by Tupelo Press as a collection of poems that "engag[e] with deserts, consumerism, Alaskan ice, religious icons, and more," The Book of Marys and Glaciers is praised by Marisa Siegel of The Rumpus, who says, "Adams challenges her...

Live from Prairie Lights | Rebecca Lehmann in conversation with Paige Lewis - 'The Beheading Game'

Wednesday, April 22, 2026 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Rebecca Lehmann will read from her new novel, The Beheading Game, and will be joined in conversation with Paige Lewis. The Beheading Game "begins in the hours after Anne Boleyn’s beheading, when she wakes to find herself unceremoniously laid to rest in a makeshift coffin, her head wrapped in linen at her knees" and continues with "Anne escapes the Tower of London, sews her head back on, then sets out on a quest to kill Henry VIII before he can marry her own lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour" (penguin...

Live from Prairie Lights | Readings from translations of the work of Kim Hyesoon: Jack Saebyok Jung for 'Lady No' & Cindy Juyoung Ok for 'The Hell of That Star'

Friday, April 24, 2026 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Visiting Professor of the Iowa Writers' Workshop Jack Saebyok Jung will read from his new translation of Kim Hyesoon's Lady No, and Cindy Juyoung Ok will read from her new translation of Hyesoon's The Hell of That Star.

Lady No is described by publisher Ecco Press as the following:

"In March 2014, Kim Hyesoon, the grand dame of contemporary Korean poetry, began to post anonymously on the online blog of Munhakdongne, a major South Korean publisher. Rather than use her own name, Kim Hyesoon’s chosen...

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop promotional image

Write at the Stanley: A Generative Writing Workshop

Sunday, April 26, 2026 2:30pm to 4:15pm
Stanley Museum of Art

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 adult writers in all genres are welcome.

Write at the Stanley meets every fourth...

Live from Prairie Lights | Tisa Bryant - 'Residual'

Tuesday, April 28, 2026 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program Assistant Professor Tisa Bryant will read from her new hybrid memoir, Residual. Publisher Nightboat Books gives this synopsis for Residual:

"In the aftermath of her mother’s death, Tisa Bryant’s Residual retrieves and catalogs what remains of her home, her psyche, and her creative practice. She filters through the remnants of her mother’s everyday life, asking what becomes an archive—a bookshelf, a dresser, a relationship, a secret? Drawing on personal memories as...

Jeffrey Yang Reading promotional image

Jeffrey Yang Reading

Thursday, April 30, 2026 8:00pm
Dey House

Join us for a reading by Jeffrey Yang:

Jeffrey Yang is the author of the poetry collections Line and Light; Hey, Marfa; Vanishing-Line; and An Aquarium. He is the translator of Bei Dao’s long poem, Sidetracks and autobiography, City Gate, Open Up; Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo’s June Fourth Elegies; Ahmatjan Osman’s Uyghurland, the Farthest Exile; Su Shi’s East Slope, and an anthology of classical Chinese poems, Rhythm 226. He is the editor of the poetry anthologies Birds, Beasts, and...

Just recently...

Live from Prairie Lights | Margaret LeMay - 'sample.spring'  promotional image

Live from Prairie Lights | Margaret LeMay - 'sample.spring'

Sunday, April 19, 2026 4:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Margaret LeMay will read from her new poetry chapbook, sample.spring. Prairie Lights owner and poet Jan Weissmiller says this about sample.spring:

"In these spare, acutely observant poems, Margaret LeMay describes the stress of living in a world so endangered it is hard to explain to a child. Her internal dialogue, with its syntax of sadness, is perfectly placed. The way the natural world enters this dialogue is imagistically exact and exacting. The poet’s perception expresses an existential...

Robyn Schiff Reading and Q&A promotional image

Robyn Schiff Reading and Q&A

Saturday, April 18, 2026 4:00pm
Dey House

Join us for a reading and Q & A with Robyn Schiff:

Robyn Schiff is the author of the poetry collections Information Desk: An Epic; Worth; Revolver; and A Woman of Property, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Schiff’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. The recipient of the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature, she is a professor at the University of Chicago and coedits Canarium...

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