Events Archive

Current Semester

Live from Prairie Lights | Lauren Haldeman in conversation with Carmen Maria Machado - 'Wild That We're Alive'  promotional image
Live from Prairie Lights | Lauren Haldeman in conversation with Carmen Maria Machado - 'Wild That We're Alive'
Wednesday, April 1, 2026 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Lauren Haldeman will read from her new graphic novel, Wild That We're Alive, and will be joined in conversation by Carmen Maria Machado. Described as "beautiful diary comics" by Simon & Schuster, Wild That We're Alive follows Haldeman's own life as a self-described "'Momboy:' part responsible child-rearing adult and part lovable feral kid." Praised as a "Midwestern, sweatpants-wearing Roz Chast," Haldeman "...portrays herself and those around her with affectionate...

Live from Prairie Lights | Jeff Boyd in conversation with James F. Thomas - 'Hard Times' promotional image
Live from Prairie Lights | Jeff Boyd in conversation with James F. Thomas - 'Hard Times'
Monday, March 30, 2026 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books

Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Jeff Boyd will read from his new novel Hard Times and will be joined in conversation with University of Iowa Visiting Assistant Professor James F. Thomas. Described as "An extraordinary crime novel from a rising star, that follows the ripple effects of a tragic shooting throughout a Chicago community from the view of the teachers, police officers, and students impacted" (us.macmillan.com), Hard Times is praised by Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling...

Farnoosh Fathi & Louisa Hall: Faculty Reading promotional image
Farnoosh Fathi & Louisa Hall: Faculty Reading
Friday, March 27, 2026 8:00pm to 9:00pm
Dey House

Join us for a reading with Workshop visiting faculty member, Farnoosh Fathi and the English department's Director of the English and Creative Writing Major, Associate Professor Louisa Hall.

Farnoosh Fathi is the author of the poetry collections Great Guns (Canarium 2013) and Granny Cloud (NYRB Poets 2024), editor of Joan Murray: Drafts, Fragments, and Poems (NYRB Poets 2018), and founder of the Young Artists Language and Devotion Alliance (YALDA). She lives and teaches in New York. Her research...

Kevin Brockmeier: Reading & Q&A promotional image
Kevin Brockmeier: Reading & Q&A
Thursday, March 26, 2026 8:00pm to 9:00pm
Dey House

In addition to his latest book, The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories, Kevin Brockmeier is the author of the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; the children’s novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery; and a memoir of his seventh-grade year called A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He has...