PrairieLights: Nicholas Russell in conv with Tony Tulathimutte – Observer
October 2 @ 7:00 pm
Nicholas Russell will read from his new novel, Observer, and will be joined in conversation with 2026 Iowa Writers’ Workshop Visiting Associate Professor (and Writers’ Workshop graduate) Tony Tulathimutte. Publisher Ecco Press describes Observer as “A disquieting, atmospheric debut horror novel about a young woman investigating her mother’s disappearance at an abandoned Nevada observatory, for fans of Jeff VanderMeer and Mariana Enriquez,” and it’s praised by Danzy Senna, author of New People and Colored Television, as “coiled, restrained, beautiful, and haunting…The result is deeply unsettling, urgent, dark, and wry.”
Nicholas Russell is a writer and editor from Las Vegas. His work has been featured in The Believer, McSweeney’s, The Yale Review, Reverse Shot,The Point, The Baffler, The Nation, and Dirt, among other publications. He’s attended Short Fiction workshops at VQR and Tin House, as well as the Critics Academy for the New York Film Festival and the Press Inclusion Initiative at the Sundance Film Festival. He’s also received support from MacDowell and the Nes Artist Residency (adapted from nicholasrussell.me/about).
Tony Tulathimutte’s novel Private Citizens was called “the first great millennial novel” by New York Magazine. A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has written for The New York Times, VICE, WIRED, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, N+1, Playboy, The Paris Review, and many others. He has received a 2017 Whiting Award, an O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Fellowship, and appeared as a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers (writersworkshop.uiowa.edu).
