Kyle McCarthy will read from his new novel, Immersions, and will be joined in conversation with Iowa Writers’ Workshop Associate Professor, Kevin Brockmeier. Publisher Tin House (Zando) describes Immersions as “Black Swan meets Bluebeard in this novel of sisterly rivalry and obsessive love set in the New York City dance scene.” Immersions is praised by bestselling author Leslie Jamison as “[moving] with the stylish swagger of the contemporary even as it sounds the deepest trenches of myth,” while The Brooklyn Rail says: “Packed with sensuality…McCarthy’s elegant and lyrical prose expertly weaves together the strands of the story, from Frances’s burgeoning sexuality, to the chaos and glamour of the New York dance world.”
Kyle McCarthy is the author of the novels Immersions (a Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2026) and Everyone Knows How Much I Love You (an Amazon Book of the Month and one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of Summer). Her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, n+1, on NPR’s Selected Shorts, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn, New York (brooklynrail.org).
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 published his stories in such venues as The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope, Tin House, The Oxford American, The Best American Short Stories, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and New Stories from the South. He has received the Borders Original Voices Award, three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. In 2007, he was named one of Granta‘s Best Young American Novelists (writersworkshop.uiowa.edu).
