Megan Greenwell: Bad Company
2026-10-20 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Acclaimed journalist Megan Greenwell’s Bad Company unearths the hidden story of corporate greed and the world of private equity by examining the lives of four American workers that were devastated as private equity upended their employers and communities: a Toys R Us floor supervisor, a rural doctor, a local newspaper journalist, and an affordable housing organizer. Taken together, their individual experiences also pull back the curtain on a much larger project: how the relentless pursuit of shareholder value reshaped the American economy to serve its own interests, creating a new class of billionaires while stripping ordinary people of their livelihoods, their health care, their homes, and their sense of security.

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.

Panel Discussion: Weirdos Writing for Weirdos: A Contemporary Approach to Speculative Fiction
2026-10-22 19:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Sci-fi, fantasy, and horror used to be the outcasts of literature, but now more than ever these speculative genres are growing in popularity–and in quality. With huge properties like Fourth Wing, Dungeon Crawler Carl, and other “weird” series running rampant across the NYT bestseller lists, it’s evident that readers crave these odd genres, and more and more authors are answering the call to deliver captivating stories–many of them independent of traditional publishing altogether.
Featuring Ben Wolf and Darby Harn
Presented by the Iowa City Book Festival and ICON, Iowa’s Longest Running Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention.

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

Lori Erickson: Travels with the Muse
2026-10-24 10:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Travels with the Muse is a journey into the creative life, told through Lori Erickson’s travels to places where art and spirit meet. From the luminous interior of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família to the rhythms of the Mississippi Blues Trail, from quilting traditions in Nebraska to the turning dance of the whirling dervishes in Türkiye, Erickson explores what happens when we approach art not as experts, but as beginners willing to pay attention.

Along the way, she sketches, listens, and learns from artists and places, discovering that creativity is less about talent than about presence. At its heart, Travels with the Muse is an invitation to see more deeply, make something with your own hands, and recognize the sacred woven through the world around us.

Book Fair
2026-10-24 10:00 - 16:00 | MERGE, 136 S Dubuque St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
A diverse collection of titles, journals, magazines, and book arts from local and regional publishers and literary organizations. A unique opportunity for book lovers to discover new authors and genres.

The Book Fair is sponsored by Greater Iowa City.

James Geary: The World in a Phrase
2026-10-24 11:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Aphorisms are literature’s hand luggage. Light and compact, they contain everything you need to get through a rough day at the office or a dark night of the soul. Aphorisms, the oldest written art form on the planet, have been going viral for thousands of years, delivering the short, sharp shock of old forgotten truths. Today, visual artists are mixing pithy language with compelling imagery and using social media to take the form into the future. In a world of disinformation and deepfakes, aphorisms point to the power of fresh debate over tired dogma and inconvenient truths over comfortable lies.
Starting in ancient China and ending with contemporary meme-makers and street artists, The World in A Phrase tells the story of the aphorism through brief biographies of some of its greatest practitioners: sages like Lao-tzu and the Buddha, philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, writers like George Eliot and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, humorists like Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker, activists like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, poets like Langston Hughes and Kay Ryan, and artists like Jenny Holzer and David Byrne.
The World in A Phrase is for lovers of words and seekers of wisdom. This new edition of The New York Times bestseller features 26 additional aphorists and explores the aphorism in the age of social media, showing why these short sentences are the ultimate deep dives in an era when TL;DR has become a cultural catchphrase.

Patricia Foster: A Marriage in Startled Air
2026-10-24 11:30 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
In A Marriage in Startled Air, Patricia Foster shares the dramatic story of how the diagnosis of her husband’s rare cancer changed the dynamics of their marriage and opened the door to the hidden world of his childhood, revealing the seeds of trauma and childhood PTSD. In vivid, often poetic prose, Foster reflects on how the journey of recovery—and discovery—between two artists in a relatively happy marriage leads to difficult conversations about family, memory, identity, and aging. Within this unburdening, Patricia and David discover a new map of intimacy: Once the illusion of normalcy is broken, what emerges is something sweeter and deeper, as if the broken thing becomes, ironically, the healing thing.

Tiffany Hanssen: My Name was Gerry Sass
2026-10-24 13:00 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Gerry Sass is not who he appears to be. On the surface, he is the proud owner of a local country music station outside of Mystic, Iowa. Beneath it, he’s a mob-connected hitman-for-hire who launders money through the station WIOA.
One morning in 1986, his life of crime catches up to him when two men march him out into the woods and shoot him in the back of the head. Plunged into purgatory, he’s doomed to a painful examination of his life. Unbeknownst to the assassins, Gerry’s closest friend, a Catholic priest named Father Dan, witnesses his execution yet does nothing to stop it.
Meanwhile, Gerry’s daughter, Early, jumps into his prized Mustang with a thirst for revenge. On her adrenaline-fueled hunt, she comes to realize that she’s more like Gerry than she ever chose to admit.
Alternating between the voices of a grieving and adrenaline-fueled daughter, a guilt-ridden priest with no one he can trust, and the voice of a dead killer not quite yet gone, My Name Was Gerry Sass exposes the complicated natures of family, grief, and God in this propulsive and darkly funny novel.

Ron Rindo: Life, and Death, and Giants
2026-10-24 13:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Gabriel Fisher was born an orphan, weighing eighteen pounds and measuring twenty-seven inches long. No one in Lakota, Wisconsin, knows what to make of him. He walks at eight months, communicates with animals, and seems to possess extraordinary athletic talent. But when the older brother who has been caring for him dies, Gabriel is taken in by his devout Amish grandparents who disapprove of all the attention and hide him away from the English world.
But it’s hard to hide forever when you’re nearly eight feet tall. At seventeen, Gabriel is spotted working in a hay field by the local football coach. What happens next transforms not only Gabriel’s life but the lives of everyone he meets.
Life, and Death, and Giants is a moving story of faith, family, buried secrets, and everyday miracles.

Scott Heim: Mysterious Skin
2026-10-24 13:00 | Iowa City Masonic Building, 312 E College St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
At the age of eight, Brian Lackey is found bleeding under the crawl space of his house, having endured something so traumatic that he has blacked out an entire five-hour period. During the following years he slowly recalls details from that night, fragments that hint at yet cannot explain what happened to him, leaving him to believe that he may have been the victim of an alien encounter.
Neil McCormick is fully aware of the events from that summer of 1981. Wise beyond his years, curious about his developing sexuality, Neil found what he perceived to be love and guidance from his baseball coach. Now, ten years later, he is a teenage hustler, unaware of the dangerous path he’s on. His recklessness is governed by idealized memories of his coach, memories that unexpectedly change when Brian comes to Neil for help and, ultimately, the truth.
Presented in partnership with the Refocus Film Festival

Tisa Bryant: Residual
2026-10-24 14:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
In the aftermath of her mother’s death, Tisa Bryant’s Residual retrieves and catalogs what remains of her home, her psyche, and her creative practice. She filters through the remnants of her mother’s everyday life, asking what becomes an archive—a bookshelf, a dresser, a relationship, a secret? Drawing on personal memories as well as archives of renowned Black women who died prematurely—including playwright Lorraine Hansberry and science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler—Bryant’s hybrid memoir details the intimate accretion of ephemera, outrage, and failure in the wake of loss.
This event is co-presented with the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program in celebration of the program’s 50th anniversary.

Sarah Minor: Carousel
2026-10-24 14:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Carousel opens as a professor begins delivering a lecture to a hot room. Her students have the internet in their pockets, screens on their wrists, seeing in more directions than students ever could before. But what, in fact, are they looking at?
In the spirit of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, Sarah Minor’s Carousel explores how the pursuit of panoramic vision frames power, distorts reality, and implicates both viewer and subject. Across short, loping sections that weave history with memoir, close looking with confession, Minor masterfully fuses the slide lecture with the lyric essay, tying medieval tapestries to surrealism and Instagram reels to predator drones. In language that captures the disorientation of that other carousel, the whirling carnival ride, Minor shows how the more we strive to see, the more we ultimately reveal ourselves.
This event is co-presented with the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program in celebration of the program’s 50th anniversary.

Harriet Clark: The Hill
2026-10-24 14:30 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Suzanna Klein was a baby when her mother got up early one morning to rob a bank with a group of fellow radicals. Now, every Saturday, Suzanna lines up at the prison gates among the other children, each dressed as if for celebration. Inside there is a nursery and a cemetery; there are watchful guards and distractable nuns; there are women counting down to release and women like Suzanna’s mother, who will never be released.
At home, Suzanna is raised by her grandmother, who is entirely unforgiving of her daughter’s crime and refuses to visit the prison. Surrounding Suzanna are her grandmother’s friends, who know one another from their years in the Communist Party and still spend extended cocktail hours debating the Hitler-Stalin pact. Though these women once insisted on changing the world, they are torn between teaching Suzanna how the world works and shielding her from it.
Suzanna vows to return to the prison forever but her mother wants her to be free. Harriet Clark’s The Hill is an incandescent novel of a child growing up between worlds, the last of three generations whose fates have been tied to punishment. It is the tale of a family broken apart by the desire for change, told with irreverent wisdom and visionary force.

Matt Singer: Funny Business
2026-10-24 14:30 | Iowa City Masonic Building, 312 E College St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
If you were a moviegoer in the early aughts, you had a front-row seat to a golden age of comedy. Ben Stiller, Seth Rogen, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson, Steve Carell, and Vince Vaughn became unlikely leading men—a band of rowdy wedding crashers, hungover bachelors, and 40-year-old virgins dubbed the “Frat Pack” that took Hollywood by storm over the span of a single decade. Then, seemingly overnight, Frat Pack movies vanished. Or did they?
In Funny Business, award-winning author and film critic Matt Singer traces the path these gonzo stars and directors took from the fringes of comedy to the mainstream—beginning on tiny stages like Second City and the Groundlings, then infiltrating into talent incubators like SNL, eventually leading to the big screen. Along the way, he shares insider stories of the films that raised a generation, including: The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Zoolander, Borat, Anchorman, Old School, and The Hangover.
How did these movies and their stars come to dominate a generation of moviemaking? Who won—and who was left out—of this comedy boom? And can studio comedies make a comeback in our modern digital and streaming world? Funny Business points the way forward to a (possible) new future for cinema—never forgetting that the audience always gets the last laugh.
Presented in partnership with the Refocus Film Festival

Writers Row – Local Author Book Fair
2026-10-25 11:00 - 15:00 | MERGE, 136 S Dubuque St, Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Local Author Book Fair! Join us as local authors present their latest works, answer questions, and sign books. Browse each author’s table where various books will be available for purchase.

The Local Author Book Fair is sponsored by Greater Iowa City.

Poetry in Public Reading featuring Iowa Student Poet Ambassador Josie Nabhan-Warren
2026-10-25 12:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
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 2026 Selected Poets. This event is live and in-person, and will be streamed live at: https://www.youtube.com/thelibrarychannel
Featuring special guest, Josie Nabhan-Warren, the 2026–27 Iowa Student Poet Ambassador.
If your poem was selected for Poetry in Public 2026 and you’d like to read it at the event, please email us at info@iowacityofliterature.org

National Youth Poet Laureate Daniel Somtochukwu Umemezie
2026-10-25 13:30 | Iowa City Public Library, 123 S. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Daniel Umemezie is a Nigerian-American poet whose work explores cultural inheritance and displacement, using bodily transformation as both metaphor and form. His poetry develops a realm between interior experience and external reality. His work has appeared in the North American Review, Scholastic, Magpie Journal and many more. He is forthcoming in Polyphony Lit, and has been recognized as the Iowa Student Poetry Ambassador, the Kenyon Young Writers Program, the Iowa Poetry Association, Humanities Iowa, and others. As the 10th National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, Daniel positions cultural specificity as formal resistance, creating what he describes as “architecture of consciousness.”

Michael McCarty: Eerie Iowa
2026-10-25 14:30 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Witness the Darker Side of the Hawkeye State
The farmlands and rural areas of Iowa are no stranger to the weird, dark and mysterious. Learn about a terrestrial sighting from 1903, a creepy cryptid that terrorized the town of Van Meter. Find out about Bigfoot sightings in Calhoun County. Peer under the waters of Lake Okoboji to find a huge lake monster. Read the history of a frightening sculpture based on a story by Franz Kafka and hear a premonition that predicted a devastating fire. Five-time Bram Stoker Finalist author Michael McCarty and Professor Emeritus Bruce Walters forge a twisted path through shadowy, Gothic Iowa. Do you dare follow?

PorchLight: The Prose Exchange
2026-10-25 15:30, 2026-11-08 15:30, 2026-11-22 15:30, 2026-12-06 15:30 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
Ready to get some eyes on your work? This group provides careful readings and positive, descriptive feedback on works-in-progress. They meet twice a month and workshop two submissions of up to 20 pages at each meeting.
They are currently open to adding one or two more members.
They advise sitting in on a session to determine if this is the workshop for you.
For more information on how to join, visit their website!

PorchLight: Flash Forward
2026-11-07 13:00, 2026-12-05 13:00 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
Flash Forward is PorchLight’s monthly studio session for writers interested in short form writing: flash fiction, micro essays, prose poetry, and more. Join them and learn more about these miniature marvels. Each session includes a discussion of short form works we love, a generative writing prompt, optional sharing, and light positive feedback.
Whether you’re new to these very short forms or an old hand, they would love to have you!
First meeting is free!

PorchLight: Writing Grief
2026-11-15 10:00 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
Grief Writing – A monthly exploration of loss and heartbreak
Jennifer New leads this monthly group that uses writing as a reflective tool to explore loss. Francis Weller’s Five Gates of Grief provides a backbone to consider grief from multiple angles, e.g., death of loved ones, loss of health or ability, grief for the world. This is an ongoing group; you’re welcome to attend once or each time. No writing experience is needed.
