Ayana Mathis with special guest moderator Lan Samantha Chang. From the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. She is repulsed by the shelter’s squalid conditions: the barely edible food, and the shifty night security guard. She
Join us for drinks and appetizers at PorchLight Literary Arts Center. Walk through our space and find out about all we do: residencies, our new co-op model, Misfit Master Classes, the PromptPress Reading Room, and our free programming.
“The levels of mystery here astound. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts and then the parts decide to act alone and challenge the whole. Lethem is not only interrogating the form of the crime novel, but the venture of storytelling itself. All of this while remaining a joy to read. Full
Legendary film director Werner Herzog will receive FilmScene’s Cinema Savant award and appear in conversation to discuss his life in film and read from his soon-to-be-released autobiography, Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir. Presented in collaboration with Prairie Lights Bookstore, Iowa City Book Festival, Infinite Dream Festival, and The Englert Theatre.
A cautionary dark satire about the fragility of democracy and how fascism can take hold even in the land of liberty, It Can't Happen Here follows the ascent of a demagogue who becomes president of the United States by promising to return the country to greatness. Witnessing the new president’s tyranny from the sidelines is
Stuart Dybek is the author of five books of fiction--Ecstatic Cahoots, Paper Lantern, I Sailed with Magellan, The Coast of Chicago, and Childhood and Other Neighborhoods–as well as two collections of poetry, Brass Knuckles and Streets in Their Own Ink. Dybek is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award, an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of
A comprehensive initiative composed of several integrated elements that features a Digital Diaries Exhibit that showcases the firsthand experiences of youth across the globe, focusing on themes of war, struggle, and resilience across time. The digital diaries exhibit, inspired by Anne Frank’s iconic, red-checked diary, showcases narratives from young individuals around the world and across
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864), his first consequential post-Siberian imprisonment publication, explores the tragicomedy of humanity’s entrapment in the confines soul-sapping modernity and serves as the foundation of the existential and metaphysical concepts he addresses in the Great Five: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, The Adolescent, and Brothers Karamazov. In commemoration of the
BRUNA DANTAS LOBATO is a writer and translator. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, A Public Space, and The Common. She was awarded the 2023 National Book Award in Translation for The Words That Remain by Stênio Gardel. Dantas Lobato was born and raised in Natal, Brazil, and lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Blue Light Hours is her debut novel.
This screening is part of a larger program that celebrates the 160th anniversary of the publication of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground." Martin Scorsese's 1976 film is the novel’s most famous US adaptation. University of Iowa Adjunct Assistant Professor Anna Barker will lead a post-screening discussion immediately following, where she will discuss the way the film explores
Sit in on a one-of-a-kind evening with writer and Iowa graduate Tracy Kidder, “a master of the nonfiction narrative” (Baltimore Sun), as he reflects on his lengthy literary career and reads from some of his bestselling work. Register here: https://foriowa.info/3yN03tD The event will feature a conversation about the power of long-form investigative writing between Kidder and
Yeehaw! Join us at Daydreams Comics, where Austin Allen Hamblin and John Ira Thomas, 2/3 of the creative team behind indie comics sensation Big Guns Stupid Rednecks, will be on hand! Take a break from fish’n and mud’n and come enjoy some old fashion comic book fun!
