ISWF instructors and Writers’ Workshop graduates Charles Holdefer and Anthony Varallo will read from their new fiction. Charles Holdefer will read from Magic Even You Can Do.  Holdefer is the author of the novels Dick Cheney in Shorts, The Contractor, Apology for Big Rod, and Back In The Game.  He is also the author of a work of Literary Criticism called George Saunders’ Pastoralia Bookmarked. His short fiction has appeared in magazines including the New England Review, Chicago Quarterly Review...

Iowa City author Caite Dolan-Leach will read from her new novel, We Went to the Woods.  “I adored so many things about We Went to the Woods--the brilliant premise, the narration, the writing, the suspense, the sly flashes of humor, the eco-Gothicism, the sexual longing, the way you're never quite sure if things are falling apart or turning into a love story. But most of all, it's incredibly compelling: The Secret History meets The Beach, with a generous dash of The Great Gatsby. Dark, gothic...

IWP Youth Program presents visiting instructors Asli Perker, Armen of Armenia, and Yuriy Serebryansky, who will read from their work.   Asli Perker is one of the most prominent writers of Turkey. She's written six novels, some of which have been translated into as many as 24 languages. Perker contributes to art magazines and has a weekly book review column. She is one of four members of the peace committee of PEN and currently lives in Istanbul. Armen of Armenia (Armen Ohanyan) is the author...

Queer fiction and essay writer Kristen Arnett will read from Mostly Dead Things, named a Most Anticipated Book of 2019 at Esquire, The Week, BuzzFeed, NYLON, Bustle, HuffPost, and The Boston Globe.  “Mostly Dead Things is one of the strangest and funniest and most surprising first novels I've ever read. A love letter to Florida and to family, to half-lit swamps and the 7/11, and to the beasts that only pretend to hold their poses inside us.” —Karen Russell Kristen Arnett has garnered a...

Former UI Director of the Center for New Performing Arts Martha Ann Letterman will read from Scarlet Cinders. The novel explores the 1950s and 60s in Washington, DC and Atlantic City, from the point of view of a young girl at a pivotal time of American cultural change. An historic family tourist house is torn down to make way for a modern apartment building,  a family beach resort is transformed into a gambling playground, and her parents go from a life of social involvement and high fashion to...

Iowa City native Daniel Blue Tyx will read from and talk about Angry Tias: Cruelty and Compassion on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Danie Blue Tyx grew up in Iowa City.  For the last ten years he has been living on the U.S.-Mexico border, where he works as a freelance writer. His new book gives readers an inside view of the child separation policy, and how "an eclectic group of fed-up border women and under-resourced lawyers transformed their initial shock and anger at the horrors taking place in...

Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate Claire Lombardo will read from The Most Fun We Ever Had, a multi-generational novel in which the four adult daughters of a Chicago couple match wits, harbor grudges, and recklessly ignite old rivalries until a long-buried secret threatens to shatter the lives they've built.   "Everything about this brilliant debut cuts deep: the humor, the wisdom, the pathos. Claire Lombardo writes like she's been doing it for a hundred years, and like she's been alive for a...

UI International Writing Program presents its author/mentors in an inaugural event for the Summer Institute! The Summer Institute is a new immersive two-week creative writing and cultural exchange program through the IWP, for participants age 18-22 from Pakistan, India, and the U.S. Rochelle Potkar, a fiction writer and poet from India, is the author of The Arithmetic of Breasts and Other Stories, Four Degrees of Separation, and Paper Asylum. Widely published online and in print, Rochelle is...

UI School of Journalism alum and former soldier Alicia Dill will read from her thriller, Squared Away.  One phone call in the middle of the night changes the life of a former soldier, Joelle McCoy. Her best friend and battle buddy, Concepcion Chapa, is dead and McCoy isn't taking the alleged car accident at face value. Determined to discover the truth, McCoy sets out on a mission to find her best friend and bring her home. Alicia Dill  joined the Army National Guard at the age of 17 and...

University of Iowa school of journalism alum and former soldier Alicia Dill will read from her thriller, Squared Away.  One phone call in the middle of the night changes the life of a former soldier, Joelle McCoy. Her best friend and battle buddy, Concepcion Chapa, is dead and McCoy isn't taking the alleged car accident at face value. Determined to discover the truth, McCoy sets out on a mission to find her best friend and bring her home  Alicia Dill spent six years as an Army soldier and...

The Coralville Center for the Performing Arts and Central State Bank present Chris and Emily Norton, who will talk about their inspiring story and sign copies of their new book, The Seven Longest Yards: Our Story of Pushing the Limits While Leaning On Each Other. In a moment, Chris went from a talented 18-year-old Luther College football player with a promising future to flat on his back with a broken neck and a 3% chance of ever moving or feeling anything below his neck, much less walking again...

We the Interwoven: An Anthology of Bicultural Iowa, Volume 2 is an anthology of Iowa residents who have multicultural backgrounds, compiled and edited by Andrea Wilson. This years’ readers will be Antonia Rivera, Dawson Davenport, Hieu Pham, Ajla Dizdarević, Rana Hewezi, Anthony Mielke. Experience their remarkable stories of living between two worlds in the middle of the American Heartland.

The IWP Between the Lines Program presents José Olivarez and Poupeh Missaghi, who will read from their work.  José Olivarez is the author of Citizen Illegal, which was shortlisted for the 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. "Citizen Illegal is a fearless, instrumental, honest collection of poetry. In other words, the book is fire— Olivarez's poetry navigates the razor sharp duality and utter contradiction of citizenship." —Willie Perdomo Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is a co-host...

Spoken word poet Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey, will present his new book, Look, Black Boy. In his debut poem collection, Rainey explores racial tensions in America from the perspective of a young Black male. Rainey hails from Columbia, Missouri, and holds a bachelors degree in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Iowa. He co-founded the literary magazine Black Art; Real Stories, and has been published in the Little Village Magazine. As a performer he is the winner of the Des...

Iowa City poet and political scientist, Michael Lewis-Beck will read from his new collection of poems, Rural Routes.  "The people that Mike Lewis-Beck conjures in Rural Routes are so enmeshed in their landscapes that where they are and who they are flicker so quickly as to become one continuous light. This is the glow of the all-night diner, the lunar light of eggs. Summer storms, lightning bugs in a jar, a faint dawn 'but enough to navigate our fall field of corn.' This is a book you can see...

As part of the ongoing celebration of Walt Whitman's 200th birthday, editors Ed Folsom, Jim Perlman and Dan Campion will be here to read from the new edition of their anthology, Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song. First published to wide critical acclaim in 1981, now re-issued as an expanded and updated third edition to celebrate Whitman's 200th birthday, this monumental anthology charts the ongoing American and international response to the legacy of the seminal poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892)...

Writers’ Workshop graduate Julie Orringer will read from her new novel, The Flight Portfolio, based on the true story of Vivian Fry’s attempt to save the work, and lives, of Jewish artists fleeing the Holocaust. “Magnificent… Unforgettable . . . Brilliantly conceived, impeccably crafted, and showcasing Orringer’s extraordinary gifts, this is destined to become a classic.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) Julie Orringer is the author of the novel The Invisible Bridge and the award-winning...

Local author Marianne Maili will read from her novel, Lucy go see. Called an “intriguing tale of sexual revelation” by Kirkus Reviews, Lucy, go see is the bildungsroman of Lucy Pilgrim, an introspective and curious young woman from rural Iowa who becomes an international model to see the world. As Lucy explores the highs and lows of the glamorous life, the novel considers what female agency, and in particular, female sexual agency, can look like. Lucy’s world has humor and romance, but the novel...

Prairie Lights celebrates the launch of two new dragon books by celebrated local children’s book stars: Gondra’s Treasure, a picture book illustrated by Jennifer Black Reinhardt, and Dragonfell, a middle grade novel by Sarah Prineas! Come meet this wonderful illustrator and author, learn how they create their work, and get a signed copy. For the love of dragons, you won’t want to miss it!  All ages are welcome. Jennifer Black Reinhardt has illustrated many acclaimed picture books and chapter...

Leslie Carol Roberts will read from her new essay collection, Here is Where I Walk: Episodes From a Life in the Forest. “A series of absorbing, funny, tragic, and deeply present ruminations…Packed with a scientist’s curiosity and an artist’s imagination, she uses her walks the way Thoreau encouraged us to treat every journey into nature: as a lesson in how to accept, relish, and even seek out change.”—John D’Agata Leslie Carol Roberts is also the author of The Entire Earth and Sky: Views on...

Leslie Carol Roberts will read from her new essay collection, Here is Where I Walk: Episodes From a Life in the Forest. “A series of absorbing, funny, tragic, and deeply present ruminations…Packed with a scientist’s curiosity and an artist’s imagination, she uses her walks the way Thoreau encouraged us to treat every journey into nature: as a lesson in how to accept, relish, and even seek out change.” —John D’Agata Leslie Carol Roberts is also the author of The Entire Earth and Sky: Views on...

Iowa City poets Chad Abushanab and Kam Hilliard will read from their recent poetry collections. Chad Abushanab is the author of The Last Visit, winner of the 2018 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. Jericho Brown praised “the speaker’s search for self and struggles with drink after surviving a childhood laden with domestic violence … I really do believe in this book and find it extraordinary as an early twenty-first century debut. ” Abushanab’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Believer, B...

Iowa City poets Chad Abushanab and Kam Hilliard will read from their recent poetry collections. Chad Abushanab is the author of The Last Visit, winner of the 2018 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. Jericho Brown praised “the speaker’s search for self and struggles with drink after surviving a childhood laden with domestic violence… I really do believe in this book and find it extraordinary as an early twenty-first century debut. ” Abushanab’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Believer, Be...

Ed Pavlić will read from Another Kind of Madness. "Ed Pavlić's Another Kind of Madness is a full-bodied literary achievement bustling with sweat, regret, and sound. ... Pavlić's narrative audacity and descriptive skill make every sentence and scene in Another Kind of Madness equal parts sorrow song, blues, funk, and of course jazz.. [A] new kind of novel that is as at once wholly innovative and in deep conversation with so many Black American literary traditions."―Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy...

New York Times Notable Book author Louis Bayard will read from Courting Mr. Lincoln. “This glorious novel, big-hearted and clear-eyed, features the most uncanny incarnation of our sixteenth president since Daniel Day-Lewis strode onscreen in Lincoln. If you love Jane Austen, or Hamilton, or fiction--of any era--that transports and transforms in equal measure, look no further...as good as storytelling gets." —A.J. Finn Bayard has been shortlisted for both the Edgar and Dagger awards for his...