Prairie Lights Reading: Will Swain – Certainly Uncertain
2026-07-17 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Will Swain will read from his new book, Certainly Uncertain: The Limitations of Knowledge and the Uncertainty of Belief. Renee Zukin, Educator, Entrepreneur, & Author of Every Day, I’m Brave, praises Certainly Uncertain as “down to earth and subtly radical,” while Sean Strain, editor and former vice president of Entrepreneur Press, says: “The book was as thought-provoking and clever as it was charming. Swain’s ideas and arguments are intellectual, inclusive, and refreshingly insightful . . . and I learned more about Bigfoot than I ever expected!”
Will Swain is a science educator with over 30 years of experience teaching students across a wide range of ages and settings. He taught undergraduate courses such as Human Biology, Evolutionary Biology, and Principles of Animal Biology at The University of Iowa, where he also administered research programs for undergraduate students, precollege students, and science teachers. At the high school level, he taught Physics, Geology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Biology, Environmental Science, and Human Biology. He also served as the regional director of the Iowa Junior Science and Humanities Symposium and as a member of the National JSHS Regional Director’s Executive Council. His interest in the relationship between science and religion began early in life and has followed him ever since. Growing up surrounded by family and friends with differing views on faith and science sparked a lifelong curiosity about belief formation. These questions ultimately led him to write Certainly Uncertain, a research-informed and personal exploration of how beliefs, and knowledge itself, take shape—and how understanding their limits and tentative nature can lead to more thoughtful and compassionate conversations (waggledancebooks.com/about-the-author/).

Sidekick: Conversation+Book Signing LT Thompson & Tatiana Scholate-Bonne
2026-07-19 15:00 | Sidekick Coffee & Books, 1310 1/2 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Join Sidekick Coffee & Books for a free to attend reading by LT Thompson and Tatiana Schlote-Bonne as they discuss their new releases on Sunday, July 19th at 2 pm.
Devils We Know is the anxiously awaited sequel to Young Adult Fantasy Devils Like Us! Cas, Remy, and Finn are on the run from the Order of Lazarus, a secret society that wants to use Cas’s prophetic powers to capture Death and ensure that only the “unworthy” and “immoral” meet their ends
The Mean Ones by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne is Midsommer meets The Final Girl Support Group in this horror novel about a woman who survived cult killings as a child and is striving to be “normal,” but a spontaneous trip into the woods and the voices in her head keep pulling her to the dark side.

Prairie Lights: Meg Richardson in conv with Claire Lombardo – Paradise Pawn
2026-07-20 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Meg Richardson will read from her debut novel, Paradise Pawn, and will be joined in conversation with Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and summer Writers’ Workshop visiting lecturer, Claire Lombardo. Tin House/Zando describes Paradise Pawn as a “dazzling debut novel about best friends, adolescent longing, and the Florida pawn shop that promises to make their dreams come true—if it doesn’t break them apart first.” It’s praised by Gary Shteyngart, author of Vera, or Faith, as “A lovely book that captures the rhythms and travails of working-class life,” while Charlee Dyroff, author of Loneliness & Company, says: “Brilliant and bighearted, Paradise Pawn transported me back to the electrifying intensity of young friendship. It beautifully captures the feeling of slowly waking up from childhood and emerging into the adult world only to realize it’s often not what we thought it would be. A total gem of a debut!”
Meg Richardson is a writer, translator, and cartoonist from Iowa. She currently lives in Vermont. She holds a BA from Williams College and an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. Her debut novel, Paradise Pawn (Tin House/Zando), is based on her experiences working behind the counter of a pawn shop.
Claire Lombardo is the author of the nationally-bestselling novel Same As It Ever Was. Her debut, The Most Fun We Ever Had, was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Reese’s Book Club pick. Her novels have been translated or are forthcoming in over a dozen languages. Claire is a graduate of the University of Illinois-Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Prior to publishing The Most Fun We Ever Had, Claire spent several years working with homeless children and families in Chicago. She has taught fiction writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Grinnell College and worked as a bookseller at Prairie Lights Books. She lives in Minneapolis. ​

Prairie Lights: Sarah Minor in conv with Melissa Febos – Carousel: An Essay on Seeing
2026-07-21 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Sarah Minor will read from her new book Carousel: An Essay on Seeing, and will be joined in conversation with fellow Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program professor and award-winning author Melissa Febos. Yale University Press gives this description of Carousel :
“Across short, immersive sections masterfully fusing the slide lecture and the lyric essay, Minor invites us to see across time as a professor-narrator tying the Bayeux Tapestry to surrealist paintings, Instagram reels, and drone warfare. Blending art history with memoir, close looking with confession, Carousel considers how the pursuit of panoramic vision frames power, distorts reality, and implicates contemporary viewers and subjects. In language that captures the disorientation of the whirling ride, Minor shows us how the more we strive to see, the more we ultimately reveal ourselves” (sarahceniaminor.com/carousel).
Barbara Browning, author of The Miniaturists, praises Carousel as “A dizzying ride past images stabbed into time,” while fellow Iowa NWP professor Tisa Bryant, author of recently published Residual, says: “Carousel invites us into the interior horizons of war, media, confinement, and creative impulse, (un)framed, artfully rendered in taut, resonant prose. A gaze-changer.”
Sarah Minor is a writer and interdisciplinary artist.​ She’s the author of Carousel: An Essay on Seeing from Yale University Press (2026), Slim Confessions: The Universe as a Spider or Spit (Noemi Press, 2021), Bright Archive (Rescue Press, 2020), and the chapbook The Persistence of The Bonyleg: Annotated (Essay Press, 2016). Minor’s prose and visual poems have been collected in places like Best American Experimental Writing, A Harp in the Stars, and Welcome to the Neighborhood. She is the recipient of a Research Fellowship to Iceland from the American Scandinavian Foundation, a 2019 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and her essay “Something Clear” was awarded the 2018 Barthelme Prize in Short Prose. Minor serves as the Video Essay and Cinepoetry Editor at Brink Magazine and on the Nonfiction editorial team at TriQuarterly Review. She holds a PhD from Ohio University, an MFA from the University of Arizona, and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction MFA Program. In addition to her writing practice, Sarah is one half of the collaborative duo Haag Cykell—an ongoing performance series with the artist Johanna Winters that explores modes of storytelling through shadow theater and language (sarahceniaminor.com/about).
Melissa Febos is the national bestselling author of five books, including Girlhood—winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, and a new memoir, The Dry Season. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, LAMBDA Literary, the Black Mountain Institute, the British Library, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Best American Essays, Vogue, and The New York Times Magazine. She is a Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in The Nonfiction Writing Program (melissafebos.com).

Rogue Workshops Faculty Reading
2026-07-22 18:30 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Join Prairie Lights Books for a special faculty reading of the inaugural “Authors at Large” Iowa City Rogue Workshops! (You can learn more about this program and the faculty here.)
Xu Xi will read from her new collection of short stories, Horizon Hong Kong.
Kelly Dwyer will read from her recent novel, Ghost Mother.
Robin Hemley will read from his latest essay collection, How to Change History.
Mary Allen and Hugh Ferrer will read from works in progress.
Note: To accommodate these writers and their readings, this event will start a bit earlier than usual, at 6:30 PM instead of seven.

Sidekick: Reading, Signing and Conversation with Naomi Kritzer
2026-08-19 19:00 | Sidekick Coffee & Books, 1310 1/2 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Join Sidekick Coffee & Books for a reading from author Naomi Kritzer on Wednesday, August 19th at 7 pm in conversation with author Katie Runde and Doctor Stephanie Radke.
One book purchase admits one person.
About the book: Doctor Liz has just been acquitted for performing the last abortion in North Dakota when she’s kidnapped.
They’re not just any kidnappers, but a fundamentalist cult, deep in the rural west, without respect for law or decency, and in desperate need of an OB/GYN.
Guarded, isolated, without access to the outside world, Liz nevertheless is treated with respect as the only doctor on the compound, but she is very aware of what happened to the last obstetrician they kidnapped.
She must escape, and bring help to the girls trapped at the compound, if it’s the last thing she does.
About the Author:
Naomi Kritzer has been re-reading favorite books since childhood, and probably still has passages from A Wrinkle in Time memorized. She writes for both adults and teens, including Catfishing on CatNet and Chaos on CatNet from Tor Teen and Liberty’s Daughter from Fairwood Press. Her writing has won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Edgar Award, the Locus Award, and the Minnesota Book Award. Naomi lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her family and three cats. The number of cats is subject to change without notice.

Iowa City Book Festival
2026-10-19 - 2026-10-25 | Downtown Iowa City
The Iowa City Book Festival is happening October 19–25, 2026! Join us for a week of literary events, author talks, readings, and more at various locations throughout downtown Iowa City. Mark your calendars. More information coming soon.
