SlamoVision Watch & Judge Party
2025-10-10 17:30 (America/Chicago) | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Join us for a special SlamoVision judging night! Attendees will watch performances from slam poets representing 17 UNESCO Cities of Literature around the world and help decide the outcome by scoring each one. Enjoy free pizza while you cast your votes—the scores from Iowa City will be combined with those from other cities to help crown the next international SlamoVision champion.

Laura Julier – Off Izaak Walton Road: The Grace That Comes Through Loss
2025-10-11 10:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Loss and sorrow can overwhelm even the strongest person, forcing them to reckon with their emotions whether they want to or not. In this extraordinary debut, Laura Julier recounts her reckoning, which took place in an old cabin tucked away on a hidden and forgotten gravel road along the Iowa River. In company with silence and snow, with eagles, owls, and a host of other birds, Julier finds solace and begins to emerge from the dark corners of grief. Over time, she comes to understand she cannot bury grief or turn aside from loss but must walk in its presence, awake and humble, until, at last, she finds her own wholeness within it.

Friends Foundation Pop-up Used Book Sale
2025-10-11 10:00 - 15:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Stop by the lobby of the Iowa City Public Library between festival events to browse for a new (to you) book.

ICON Vendor Hall
2025-10-11 11:00 - 17:00 | Iowa City Masonic Building, 312 E College St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
The ICON Science fiction convention returns to downtown Iowa City during the Iowa City Book Festival!
Browse booksellers, authors, and others at the ICON Vendor Hall, Iowa City Masonic Lodge Social Hall, 312 E College St.
Free admission and open to the public.

Ted Geltner: Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures
2025-10-11 11:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
The year was 1988, and Denis Johnson was at a low point. He caught malaria on a reporting trip into the jungles of the Philippines and was nearly pronounced dead. The disease left him unable to write. His second wife left him. He didn’t have enough money to pay his taxes. His publisher was waiting for a book that he hadn’t started. But in the life of Denis Johnson, when things were at their bleakest, something good was usually waiting around the next corner. This time, what emerged from the chaos was his masterpiece Jesus’ Son, a book that would tap into the zeitgeist of the 1990s and become a bible for Generation X and an American classic.
Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures tells the complete story of Johnson’s fascinating life, his thrill-seeking trips into war zones as a magazine correspondent, his battles with addiction, his live-it-before-you-write-it style of fiction. It follows the arc of his tremendous body of work as a novelist, journalist, poet, and playwright, and in the process recovers the true stories from the hazy myths that one of our most beloved, yet enigmatic, writers left behind.

Gregory Galloway: All We Trust and Scott Phillips: The Devil Raises His Own
2025-10-11 11:30 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
In All We Trust, what starts out as a family squabble turns into an international battle between competing crime organizations, moving from small town New England to San Francisco to Mexico. Along the way the brothers encounter betrayal, double-dealing, kidnapping, and ultimately, revenge.
The Devil Raises His Own, meanwhile, picks up the story of Bill Ogden, protagonist in Phillips’s earlier novels Cottonwood and Hop Alley, as he navigates the early days of the film industry in this bawdy tale.
Both authors are steeped in the history of noir fiction, and will discuss their own work against that backdrop.

John Scalzi: The Shattering Peace
2025-10-11 11:30 | Iowa City Masonic Building, 312 E College St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
For a decade, peace has reigned in interstellar space. A tripartite agreement between the Colonial Union, the Earth, and the alien Conclave has kept the forces of war at bay, even when some would have preferred to return to the fighting and struggle of former times. For now, more sensible heads have prevailed – and have even championed unity.
But now, there is a new force that threatens the hard-maintained peace: The Consu, the most advanced intelligent species humans have ever met, are on the cusp of a species-defining civil war. This war is between Consu factions… but nothing the Consu ever do is just about them. The Colonial Union, the Earth and the Conclave have been unwillingly dragged into the conflict, in the most surprising of ways.
Gretchen Trujillo is a mid-level diplomat, working in an unimportant part of the Colonial Union bureaucracy. But when she is called to take part in a secret mission involving representatives from every powerful faction in space, what she finds there has the chance to redefine the destinies of humans and aliens alike… or destroy them forever.

Jennifer Fawcett: Keep This For Me
2025-10-11 13:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
One hot August night in 1993, a young couple go to a party. When their car breaks down, they are picked up by a truck driver who attacks the man and abducts the woman. She is never seen again.
That woman was Fiona Green’s mother.
When the trucker, Eddie Ward, is caught, a mass grave of bodies is discovered in his backyard but Fiona’s mother isn’t there. Thirty years later, on his prison deathbed, Ward insists that he didn’t kill her, so Fiona finds herself back in the small town where her mother disappeared. Fighting demons of her own, she’s shocked when history repeats itself: another woman, another roadside breakdown, and another disappearance. Only this time the primary suspect is Jason Ward, Eddie’s son. Desperate, Fiona hunts down answers, unaware that she is being drawn into a dangerous trap.
Fawcett will be joined in conversation by Tim Budd.

Art Cullen: We Crapped In Our Nest
2025-10-11 13:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
We have fouled our nest over the past half century in a way that was almost unavoidable, given our history of seeking domination — first over the Indigenous people of the Western World, then over their land. Native people for millennia lived with the land in a vital relationship. Europeans set out to transform that relationship brutally, and this destruction has reached a head. We simply cannot go on like this, washing our soil down the river while the planet bakes, ignoring our own immigration story.
As Art writes, “Fifty years around a small town amid the teeming waves of golden corn, a lot has changed, but corn remains king, just like when we were in school. But the place we knew is gone, that world of family farms and the Saturday livestock auction. We are the poorer for it. This is how it went down, or at least how I put it down, in notes compiled over this strange time from Irving Street just up from the lake in the small town we called home.”

Joe Haldeman and The Forever War
2025-10-11 13:00 | Iowa City Masonic Building, 312 E College St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman’s 1974 novel and the first sci-fi work shaped by the Vietnam War, continues to resonate decades later. Haldeman, a Vietnam veteran and Iowa Writers’ Workshop alum, crafted a story that John Scalzi calls “timeless, because what’s in the book touches on something that never goes away.” Join Haldeman, his wife Gay, Scalzi, and Haldeman’s former student Mike Miller as they discuss this landmark novel and ICON, Iowa’s beloved science fiction and fantasy convention, which marks its 50th anniversary this year.
Moderated by Pete Balestrieri

Incognito Lounge: Celebrating the work of Denis Johnson
2025-10-11 14:00 | Riverside Theatre, 119 E College St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Denis and Cindy Johnson
Friends and admirers of the late Denis Johnson read from and discuss his work at this special event co-presented with FilmScene’s Refocus Film Festival and the University of Iowa Office for Writing and Communication. Participants include Chris Offutt, Cindy Lee Johnson, Will Patton, Rachel Yoder, Red Danielson, and James Galvin.

Candle Light Press 30th Anniversary signing
2025-10-11 14:00 - 16:00 | Daydreams Comics, 229 E Washington St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Come celebrate the 30th anniversary of Iowa City’s own Candle Light Press! Carter Allen, Austin Allen Hamblin, and John Ira Thomas will be signing books at Daydreams on Saturday, October 11th at 200p-400p. It’s been a big year for the press, so there’s lots of new books–Zoo Force: Blue Route and Stops Along the Way, Ectyron V. Rojo Gallo, the Twells/Hamblin Collection, Savage Dirt Axes, and Zoo Force: The Works!
Presented in partnership with Daydreams Comics.

Panel Discussion: Sense of Place
2025-10-11 14:30 | Iowa City Masonic Building, 312 E College St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
In this panel, writers will discuss place and setting as key in many kinds of writing. They will explore the following questions: How do you convey a sense of place or paint a unique landscape? In what ways does location contribute to your writing? Can a literary work truly be ‘universal,’ or will place always determine how a piece is understood?
Featuring: Agnes Chew, Siddharth Dasgupta, Jennifer Fawcett, Vlora Konushevci, and Ndongolera C. Mwangupili. Moderated by Derek Nnuro.

Tatiana Schlote-Bonne: The Mean Ones
2025-10-11 14:30 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
So what if Sadie hears talking dead animals and a strange, comforting male voice in her head? The therapist insists these are just symptoms of PTSD. It makes sense considering that she hid under the bed and watched as her best friends were slaughtered.
But the murders were seventeen years ago, back when her name was Sabrina. Now, she’s Sadie: a perfectly normal 29-year-old. She works as a physical therapist assistant and lifts weights with her boyfriend, Lucas, who’s the sweetest, most considerate man—as long as he’s not angry. But when Lucas spontaneously agrees to join a couples trip to a cabin in the woods, the visions get worse, a strange figure stalks her during the night, and that male voice in Sadie’s head keeps calling, asking her to do things she’s never fathomed.
Sadie’s not sure if it’s her paranoia or something else entirely . . . But she is sure of one thing—this time, she’s not going to sit idly by as everything starts to unravel.
Tatiana will be joined in conversation with Carey Dunne.

Christina Ward: Holy Food
2025-10-11 14:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Does God have a recipe? Christina Ward’s Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat – An American History investigates the explosion of religious movements since the Great Awakenings that birthed a cottage industry of food fads and cookbooks. Ward uncovers the interconnectivity between obscure sects and communities of the 20th Century who dabbled in vague spirituality and used food to both entice and control followers. Holy Food draws on a range of sources, including academic studies, interviews, cookbooks, and religious texts, to offer sharp insights into American history in this highly readable journey through the American kitchen.
“Looks yummy!”
— John Waters
“Holy Food is a titanic feat of research and a fascinating exploration of American faith and culinary rites. Christina Ward is the perfect guide – generous, wise, and ecumenical.” — Adam Chandler, author of Drive-Thru Dreams

Anna Barker: 13 Notes from Napoleon, Iowa: Musings on the Edge of the French Empire
2025-10-11 16:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, Napoleon was the ruler of Iowa between 1800 and 1803 when he served as the First Consul of the French Republic. Iowa City, Iowa, evolved out of the 1838 settlement named after him — Napoleon, Iowa — the location marked today by Napoleon Park, off Napoleon Lane, just south of Iowa City. The book illuminates aspects of Iowa’s French past, such as cities named after the Napoleonic battles of Marengo and Waterloo, and explains the mystery of Iowa’s distinctly French-looking flag. Along the way, the author muses on other Napoleon-related matters, such as Empire waist gowns, Goethe’s and Byron’s Bonapartism, the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, the Congress of Vienna, and to what extent Europe’s current internal contradictions have been impacted by its Napoleonic past.

Patricia Lockwood: Will There Ever Be Another You
2025-10-11 16:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together – of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease. She’s afraid of her own floorboards, and “WHAT IS LOVE? BABY DON’T HURT ME” plays over and over in her ears. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn’t know who they are.
Has the illness stolen her old mind and given her a new one? Does it mean she’ll get to start over from scratch, a chance afforded to very few people? The very weave of herself seems to have loosened: time and memories pass straight through her body. “I’m sorry not to respond to your email,” she writes, “but I live completely in the present
now.”
Will There Ever Be Another You is the brain-shredding, phosphorescent story of one woman’s dissolution and her attempt to create a new way of thinking, as well as a profound investigation into what keeps us alive in times of unprecedented disorientation and loss, from one of our most original writers.

Panel Discussion: Importance of Genre
2025-10-11 16:00 | Iowa City Masonic Building, 312 E College St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A lively conversation with writers exploring how genre shapes stories, readers, and the writing process.
Featuring:
Anna Bruno, Gregory Galloway, Scott Phillips, and Tatiana Schlote-Bonne. Moderated by Nina Lohman.

John Ira Thomas: Tire Magazine
2025-10-11 16:30 - 17:30 | Daydreams Comics, 229 E Washington St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Join John Ira Thomas for a journey through the mystical and the mundane through the metafictional series of Tire magazine! John will read from Tire June 2000, Tire Annual 2021, Tire May 2038, and work in progress from The Best of Tire Classifieds. Alternate timeline John’s life may have been ruined by a New Age boomlet fixated on something he drew when he was nine, but the John of this universe is happy to share and laugh along.

Sidekick Coffee and Books Presents: It’s Getting Plot in Here A Romance Book Festival
2025-10-11 18:00 - 21:00 | Sidekick Coffee & Books, 1310 1/2 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Join Sidekick Coffee and Books for the Romance Book Festival, a night of romance, creativity, and community.
$35 — available now! bit.ly/Sidekick_Romance_Book_Festival
Author Meet & Greet Line-Up:

Chloe Angyal – Pointe of Pride, Pas de Don’t, Barre Fight
Kelly Farmer – Fanning the Flames, Secret Spark, It’s a Fabulous Life
Gin Griffith – Holy Smoke, Cat Fight
Megan Murphy – Fake It Like You Mean It, Heart Racer
Esha Patel – Offtrack, Overdrive
Elise Wayland – Rivals to Lovers
Denise Williams – Just Our Luck, Do You Take This Man

What’s included with your ticket:
Meet & Greets with incredible romance authors
Blind Date with a Book (free book included!)
Champagne shooters
Book embellishment station – bedazzle your book and get creative!
Flirty photo ops & cozy fall vibes

Poetry in Public Reading Featuring Iowa’s Student Poet Ambassador, Daniel Umemezie
2025-10-12 12:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Daniel Umemezie, 2025–26 Iowa Student Poet Ambassador
Poetry in Public celebrates our community’s rich literary tradition and local writing talent by displaying poems by writers of all ages. Hear from some of the 2025 Selected Poets. This event is live and in-person, and will be streamed live at: https://www.youtube.com/thelibrarychannel
Featuring special guest, Daniel Somotochukwu Umemezie, the 2025–26 Iowa Student Poet Ambassador.
Participating Poets:
Kiley Adkins | Philip Beck | Dan Campion | Melanie Hester | Jennifer Horn-Frasier | Jessica Moore | Anna Moyers Stone | Charlotte Pearl | Mazzy Sleep | Rich Sokoli | Anjali Strand
If your poem was selected for Poetry in Public 2025 and you’d like to read it at the event, please email us at info@iowacityofliterature.org

Panel Discussion: Beyond Publishing – Writing as Joy, Healing, and Priority
2025-10-12 13:00 | MERGE, 136 S Dubuque St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
This panel will explore writing beyond publishing, focusing on how the practice itself can bring joy, healing, and meaning. Panelists will also consider how books, reading, and art can serve as medicine, balm, or even dessert, nourishing both mind and spirit.
Featuring: Erin Casey, Kellee Forkenbrock, Mackie Garrett, and Morgan Webb | Moderated by Jesus “Chuy” Renteria

Panel Discussion – The Black Superwoman & Mental Health: Power & Pain
2025-10-12 14:30 | DREAM CITY, 611 Southgate Avenue, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Panelists will discuss this new anthology, The Black Superwoman & Mental Health: Power & Pain by Venise Berry and Janette Taylor.
It is not easy to reveal oneself and to be vulnerable in a public way as the authors in this book have done. This is the act of resisting the voices and social scripts that say we do not air our “dirty laundry”, we should keep “secrets” to remain safe, yet unhealthy. We must find safe spaces to speak our truths, to heal. It is through the process of seeking, doing, and being, sometimes in public like this anthology and sometimes in private (counseling or psychotherapy), that many of us learn to acknowledge, analyze, speak, and eventually write the truth of/about our lives in order to move closer to being whole Black women. Enjoy poetry, short stories, essays, and assessable research in this powerful anthology.
Featuring: Venise Berry, Professor of Journalism and African American Studies, University of Iowa; Averi Bryant, Graphic Arts Designer & Social Media Promoter; Katrina Harden-Williams, Doctoral Candidate in School of Education, Drake University; Tianna Newell, First Lady of Purpose Place Church in Iowa City; Tiana Warner, Spoken Word Artist, Writer.

Kazim Ali with Rajaa Alsanea and Yu Yuen Lan
2025-10-12 15:30 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Poet, novelist, and essayist Kazim Ali will read as a special guest of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. He is joined by IWP participants Rajaa Alsanea (Saudi Arabia) and Yu Yuen Lan (Hong Kong), who will also read from their work.

Little Village Presents: Roast of Iowa City
2025-10-12 18:00 | ReUnion Brewery, 113 E College St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
Year after year, some of the area’s most treasured comics and writers gather together to relentlessly burn and mock everything sacred and dear about our town. Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
This year is hosted by Karen Vásquez and features a lineup of talented comics, plus LV’s Dear Kiki Live!, where we read your anonymous love and relationship questions and Kiki answers them on the spot. The Roast of Iowa City is sponsored by Romantix, who said they’ll be sending a box of “fun prizes for on-stage giveaways.” =
This is and always has been a free event, but guests are encouraged to make a donation so Little Village can continue doing what they do (journalism, etc.) well into our dystopian future.

Bonnie Jo Campbell: The Spirits
2026-10-20 18:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Bonnie Jo Campbell, a master of rural American fiction, brings us a hair-raising winter tale to warm us by the fireside. In this contemporary Christmas Carol, Campbell has created a gritty, spooky, and ultimately heartening holiday story that unfolds in an isolated farmhouse. It is the night before Christmas in a small town in Michigan, and a young woman is haunted by her father’s death. She has been silently penitent for nine years, but her guilt and grief have estranged her from her community and her family. She has taken refuge in the natural world of the plants and trees she tends, but on this anniversary of the tragedy, the supernatural landscape is rattling its chains.
When a surprise guest appears at the (dreaded) Christmas Eve dinner, the family begins to open up and reveal dangerous secrets and crimes nobody is willing to face. Within this darkest chaos, a sliver of light appears, showing a way to reclaim communion and even a sense of humor. While redemption is never easy or wholesale, the story that a family creates together can heal wounds.

Curator Guided Tour: It’s Been Wonderful Knowing You: Wildlife Conservation and Advocacy Through the Lens of Jay N. “Ding” Darling
2026-10-21 16:00 | University of Iowa Main Library Gallery, 125 W Washington St, Iowa City, IA, United States
Join co-curators Collin Vandewalle and Lindsay Moen for a special guided tour of the current University of Iowa Libraries Main Library Gallery exhibition, It’s Been Wonderful Knowing You: Wildlife Conservation and Advocacy Through the Lens of Jay N. “Ding” Darling. Oct. 21 is also Darling’s birthday, so stop by for birthday treats before or after the tour! (Gluten-free and vegan options available.)
All are welcome to attend this free event, which is being held in partnership with the Iowa City Book Festival.
About the exhibit:
A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Des Moines Register, Jay N. “Ding” Darling (1876–1962) was also one of the nation’s most influential figures in the American conservation movement. Appointed director of the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey (later part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Darling made historic attempts to answer his growing concerns about industrialism’s impact on the environment.
In celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth, this exhibition explores the transformation of Iowa’s environmental landscape during Darling’s life and his contributions to environmental and wildlife conservation advocacy nationwide. It also showcases how his legacy lives on today both locally and across the country, and how other Iowans have played key roles in our state’s conservation efforts. Curated by librarians Lindsay Moen and Collin Vandewalle, It’s Been Wonderful Knowing You highlights the Jay N. “Ding” Darling Papers from Special Collections and Archives, specimens from the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History, and more from across the Libraries.

Slamovision: International Slam Poetry Judging
2026-10-21 18:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Join Iowa City poets and poetry lovers during the Iowa City Book Festival to watch and rank slam poets from UNESCO Cities of Literature around the world as they compete for the 2026 Slamovision title. Scores from this international competition will help determine the winner, who will be crowned at the Slamovision final on November 1 at The James Theater in Iowa City.

Melissa Tedone: The Poison Book Project
2026-10-22 17:00 | University of Iowa Main Library, 125 W Washington St,, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
The Poison Book Project is an interdisciplinary research initiative at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and the University of Delaware. This ongoing investigation explores the materiality of Victorian-era publishers’ bindings. Research focuses on identifying potentially toxic pigments used in bookbinding components and how to handle and store potentially toxic collections more safely.
Melissa Tedone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art Conservation at the University of Delaware and Associate Director of the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. A specialist in the conservation of library and archival materials, she previously served as Library & Archives Conservator at Iowa State University.

An Evening with Pulitzer Prize Winner Yiyun Li
2026-10-23 19:30 | Levitt Center for University Advancement, 1 East Park Road, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Internationally acclaimed author Yiyun Li won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for her resonant memoir, Things in Nature Merely Grow, a deeply moving account of losing her younger son to suicide a little more than six years after her older son died in the same manner.
The Princeton University professor is the author of 12 books—and was a finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. In addition, she is the recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award, a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize. Time Magazine also included Li on its list of 100 Most Influential People for 2026.
Melissa Febos, director of the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, will join Li in conversation. Febos is the national bestselling author of five books and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.
This event is possible due to generous support from Linda Maxson, professor emerita and former dean of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and her husband, Rick. It is being held in conjunction with the Iowa City Book Festival.
Literary Legends represents a special collaboration among the UI Nonfiction Writing Program, Iowa Writers’ Workshop, UI Lecture Committee, University of Iowa Center for Advancement, and Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature
