Prairie Lights: Tabatha Leggett in conv with Jan Steyn – Enchantment
2026-09-09 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
University of Iowa Literary Translation MFA candidate Tabatha Leggett will read from her translation of Riikka Pulkkinen’s novel, Enchantment, and will be joined in conversation with Jan Steyn. Described as “a spellbinding literary mystery that explores the uneasy terrain of girlhood, where one is always being watched, shaped, and judged by others” (scribepublications.com), Enchantment is praised by Shelf Awareness as “a striking novel about girlhood, perception, and death,” while Catherine Airey, author of Confessions, says: “An intricate tapestry of a novel by a masterful writer. Enchantment’s real triumph is its investigation into what we mean to one another as imperfect people.”
Tabatha Leggett is a writer and literary translator from North Wales. She is a current Iowa Arts Fellow at the University of Iowa’s Literary Translation MFA program and a graduate of New York University’s Fiction MFA programme, where she was an Axinn Fellow. Enchantment is her debut translation.
Jan Steyn is a writer, scholar, and translator working from Afrikaans, French, and Dutch. His forthcoming translations include Wilma Stockenström’s Abjater’s Laughter and two books by Ronelda Kamfer, the novel Compound and the poetry volume soil/Santekraam. He is the author of Jig (Sylph Editions, 2026) and editor of Translation: Crafts, Contexts, Consequences (Cambridge, 2022). He teaches at the University of Iowa, where he directs the MFA in Literary Translation.

PrairieLights – Patricia Albers in conv with Garth Greenwell, Everything Is Photograph: A Life of André Kertész
2026-09-10 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Patricia Albers will read from her new biography, Everything Is Photograph: A Life of André Kertész, and will be joined in conversation with Garth Greenwell. Described as “The first full biography of the innovative ‘father of modern photography’ [which] vividly depicts his life and works, from Hungary to France and America, across the 20th century,” Everything Is Photograph is praised by the New York Times, which says: “Everything Is Photograph is filled with [Albers’s] gorgeous descriptions of Kertész’s pictures, tempting you to interrupt your reading to Google every photo she writes about with such acuity and care. But the life she recounts is fascinating, too.”
Patricia Albers is a San Francisco Bay Area–based writer, editor, and art historian (not to be confused with the anthropologist Patricia C. Albers). She is the author of Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter: A Life, the acclaimed first biography of the abstract painter. Her previous books were Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti and Tina Modotti and the Mexican Renaissance. Using photographs discovered during her research about Modotti, Albers co-organized the exhibition “Tina Modotti and the Mexican Renaissance,” shown at European museums and at the Rencontres d’Arles and garnering wide coverage in the European media, including a front-page story in Le Monde hailing it as “the first great [Modotti] exhibition in France.” Albers’s essays, art reviews, and features have appeared in numerous museum catalogs and publications, including San Francisco Magazine, the San Jose Mercury News, and the New York Times. She has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Humanities and a juror for Biographers International Plutarch Award. She is also an instructor emerita of art history at San Jose State University. Her research and writing of Everything Is Photograph: A Life of André Kertész was supported by a grant from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation (https://patriciaalbers.net/about).
Garth Greenwell is the author of three books of fiction, most recently Small Rain, which won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His first novel, What Belongs to You, won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second book, Cleanness, was a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for several awards, including the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, and France’s Prix Sade. It was named a Best Book of 2020 by The New Yorker, Time, The Washington Post, and over thirty other publications. His books have been translated into more than fifteen languages.

PrairieLights – Lizzie Buehler in conv with Julia Conrad, The Obsessed
2026-09-11 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Iowa graduate Lizzie Buehler will read from her debut novel, The Obsessed, and will be joined in conversation by Julia Conrad. Described as “A bighearted portrait of the anxieties of desire [that] explores the trials of modern dating, the strange ennui of academia, and the question of how to create a world for yourself within and without the confines of your influences,” The Obsessed is praised by Forbes.com as “[A] delectable novel about obsession and dating in the modern age,” while Debutiful says: “You will obsess over The Obsessed…It’s sad. It’s weird. It’s horny. You’ll yearn while reading Buehler’s brilliant writing.”
Lizzie Buehler is the translator of The Disaster Tourist (winner of the CWA Dagger for crime fiction in translation), Art on Fire, and Table for One by Yun Ko-eun, and Korean Teachers by Seo Su-jin. She holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa and has studied comparative literature at Harvard and Princeton. The Obsessed is her debut novel.
Julia Conrad is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Iowa and is a writer and Italian translator. Her work has been published in The Massachusetts Review, The Offing, Revista Nexos, Asymptote, and the anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books 2020), among others, and she’s a contributor to VAN Magazine and The Millions. Her first book, a hidden history of women in classical music, is forthcoming from Scribner Books. She holds two MFAs from the University of Iowa, in Nonfiction and in Literary Translation.

PorchLight: Poetry Exchange
2026-09-12 10:30 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
This writer guided critique group offers poets the chance to receive carefully considered feedback, and find writerly community.
Writers share drafts of work in advance so readers have enough time to provide considered feedback. Feedback is mostly positive, and descriptive, but writers can ask for proscriptive feedback if they wish. This workshop model centers the writer, and gives them control over the amount and type of feedback they receive.
For more information on how to join, visit their website!

PorchLight: Queer Writers' Check In
2026-09-12 13:00, 2026-10-10 13:00 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
Similar to their Long Project Check In, this group is for queer writers looking to build literary community together. Each session will include free writing, discussion of works in progress, and general literary support. Occasionally, there will be guests and opportunities for trading work.
Visit their website to RSVP!

PorchLight: The Prose Exchange
2026-09-13 15:30, 2026-09-27 15:30, 2026-10-11 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!

PrairieLights – Luis Muñoz, Garth Greenwell, & Idra Novey – One Moment: Poems
2026-09-16 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Renowned Spanish poet Luis Muñoz will read from his debut North American poetry collection, One Moment, and will be joined by his English translators, his husband Garth Greenwell and Idra Novey. Described as “Sweet, surreal, and haunting,” the poems in One Moment “examine both the frictions and elusiveness that can occur between self and others…the gentle observation of sunlight like ‘golden cookies on the bedspread’ as you lie next to a lover. The feeling of solitude rendering you as small and still as a garbanzo bean, yearning as much for water and light as to continue being left alone” (simonandschuster.com). Bestselling poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar praises One Moment by saying, “It’s thrilling to encounter poetry this fresh, this undeniable,” and adds, “No one today sounds like this.”
Luis Muñoz is the author of seven books of poetry, including Vecindad. He has received the Ciudad de Córdoba, Generación del 27, and Ojo Crítico prizes, among others. He divides his time between Madrid and Iowa City, where he directs the Spanish-language creative writing MFA program at the University of Iowa.
Garth Greenwell is the author of three books of fiction, most recently Small Rain, which won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His first novel, What Belongs to You, won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second book, Cleanness, was a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for several awards, including the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, and France’s Prix Sade.
Idra Novey is a novelist, poet, and translator. Her most recent novel Take What You Need was a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, and chosen as a Barnes & Noble Fiction Pick. Her first novel Ways to Disappear was a finalist for the L.A. Times First Fiction Prize and a winner of the 2016 Brooklyn Public Library Prize and the Sami Rohr Prize. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into a dozen languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.

PrairieLights – A reading with Camille T. Dungy, America, A Love Story
2026-09-17 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
The 2024 Paul Engle Prize winner and celebrated poet Camille T. Dungy will read from her newest poetry collection, America, a Love Story. Described by publisher Wesleyan University Press as a “powerful testament to living and loving as a Black woman and mother in today’s America, and her first book of poetry in almost a decade,” America, a Love Story is praised by Charley Burlock of Oprah Daily as an “electrifying new collection [that] arrives just on time, offering a version of patriotism capable of meeting the present moment and carrying us through to a brighter future,” while award-winning poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar says: “What a great fan I am of Camille Dungy’s work. I’ve spent so much time sitting at the foot of her language, just sort of learning what I can in slack-jawed wonder.”
Camille T. Dungy is the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (2023). She has also written Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History (2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade (2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. Dungy edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009), and her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems, Best American Essays, The 1619 Project, plus dozens of venues including The New Yorker, Poetry, Literary Hub, The Paris Review, and Poets.org. A University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Dungy’s honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, an Honorary Doctorate from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry (weslpress.org).

SideKick – reading and signing with Paige Towers and Sarah Elgatian
2026-09-17 19:00 | Sidekick Coffee & Books, 1310 1/2 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Join Sidekick Coffee and Books for the launch of “What they Stole: Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption” by Paige Towers in conversation with Sarah Elgatian.
About the book: In 1955, following the devastation of the Korean War, Bertha and Harry Holt made headlines for adopting eight Korean children. Driven by evangelical convictions and emboldened by a spacial act of Congress, the couple founded the Holt Adoption Program, which would facilitate migration of tens of thousands of Korean children to the United States over the following decades. The Sueppels were among the families profoundly shaped by the legacy of the Holt Adoption Program, until 2008, when Steven found himself facing federal embezzlement and money laundering chargers, he murdered Sheryl and their adopted children before ending his own life. What They Stole traces the interwoven histories of the Holts and the Sueppels, Meticulously researched and sensitive to its storytelling, Paige Towers examines how goos intentions can coexist with systemic harm- and how the consequences of systems like the Holt’s can reverberate across generations.
One book purchase admits two people

PrairieLights – [Virtual Event] Nancy Sowell in conv. with Melissa Febos – Internal Family Systems Health Therapy: Treating Trauma-Related Physical Illness & Toxic Stress
2026-09-18 18:30 | IA
[Virtual Event] Find the link on PrairieLights website
Nancy Sowell, LICSW, will read from her new book co-authored with Martha Sweezy, PhD, and Richard C. Schwartz, PhD: IFS (Internal Family Systems) Health Therapy: Treating Trauma-Related Physical Illness & Toxic Stress. She will be joined in conversation by bestselling author and daughter, Melissa Febos. (Note: This will be a virtual event on Zoom and will start at 6:30 PM CDT.)
The publisher, PESI Publishing, offers this introduction for IFS Health Therapy:
Many chronic health conditions–from inflammation and digestive disorders to metabolic syndrome and autoimmune diseases–are increasingly linked to the lasting effects of chronic stress and trauma. But how do these experiences become embedded in the body, and how can we help?
In IFS (Internal Family Systems) Health Therapy, Nancy Sowell, in collaboration with Martha Sweezy and IFS founder Richard Schwartz, draws upon thirty years of clinical practice and behavioral medicine experience to present a groundbreaking mind-body approach that views protective and vulnerable inner “parts” as key drivers of physical health concerns. From this perspective, relief emerges as clients support these internal parts and release trauma-related burdens.
Through vivid case examples, experiential exercises, and practical tools, clinicians will learn how to use a clear three-phase framework to:

Understand how trauma and chronic stress contribute to illness
Conduct an IFS-informed health therapy assessment
Identify and befriend protective parts that affect physical symptoms
Help vulnerable parts release trauma-related burdens
Collaborate with other health professionals to support whole-person care

Adversity can alter a person’s mind and body, but it does not extinguish the Self’s capacity to heal. This book equips you with the tools to support that capacity.
Nancy Sowell, LICSW, is an IFS senior trainer, consultant, and speaker who teaches internationally and in the US and maintains an IFS health therapy practice. She is a Harvard Medical School teaching associate at the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at the Cambridge Health Alliance, where she has served for many years as a clinical consultant and IFS trainer. Her work integrates personal history, mindful awareness of the body, emotions, thoughts, and deeply held beliefs that influence our mood, behavior, relationships, and health. As the Behavioral Medicine program manager in the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology, and Allergy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, she co-created an IFS program that demonstrated positive outcomes for patients with rheumatoid arthritis. She knows both personally and professionally the power of the Self in healing and restoring health. Visit her website: www.nancysowell.com.
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).

PorchLight: Write Now - Community Supported Writing Group
2026-09-21 10:30, 2026-10-19 10:30 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
PorchLight’s Write Now Writer’s Group provides community, and learning opportunities for beginning to intermediate writers. At their monthly meetings, share short craft lessons, generate writing from prompts, and, on occasion, provide responses to participants’ work in progress. Writers working in any genre are welcome.
This is a great group for writers who have not had the time or opportunity to pursue a traditional MFA.
RSVP one week in advance on their website!

Prairie Lights: Katie Bennett in conversation with Nina Lohman & Alisha Jeddeloh
2026-09-22 19:00 | Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Katie Bennett will read from her new book, She Was Wild Grass, and will be joined in conversation with BRINK publisher and author Nina Lohman & BRINK editor Alisha Jeddeloh.
Bennett’s website offers this introduction: “She Was Wild Grass intertwines Bennett’s artistic coming-of-age with the story of Joan Vollmer, the remarkable yet overlooked figure of the Beat Generation whose life was cut short when her husband, William S. Burroughs, shot her in 1951. Braiding past and present, Bennett explores art, ambition, gender, and freedom, asking what it means to create in a world where women’s stories are so often silenced and forgotten” (katiepbennett.com/book). Sarah Manguso, author of Liars, praises She Was Wild Grass as “so dense with narrative, and it goes down like spring water,” while Rachel Yoder, bestselling author of Nightbitch and University of Iowa professor, says: “Highly recommend this new book by Katie Bennett which dignifies the life and death of Joan Vollmer, the fascinating & flawed woman who was (sort of) married to William Burroughs and was ultimately murdered by him. The book also dignifies Katie’s own story of becoming. It feels amazing to read women give other women, and themselves, their due.”
Katie Bennett is a writer based in Philadelphia. Her first book, She Was Wild Grass, will be released by BRINK Books September 2026. She’s published work in Lit Hub, swamp pink, and The Rumpus and received fellowships from Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and Monson Arts. She runs the reading series Personal Velocity. She also spent a decade touring North America and Europe with various bands and her songwriting has been featured in Pitchfork, SPIN, Rolling Stone, and NPR.
Nina Lohman writes hybrid nonfiction that seeks to understand pain through the lenses of medicine, theology, and philosophy. Her memoir The Body Alone: A Lyrical Articulation of Chronic Pain, was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2024. She is the Literary Programming Director for the Mission Creek Festival and the Nonfiction Editor of PromptPress, an interdisciplinary book-arts journal that pairs writers and visual artists to create and publish new work. Her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, Paste Magazine, The Rumpus, Essay Daily, The Other Journal, Earth Island Journal, and elsewhere.
Alisha Jeddeloh is a writer and editor based in Iowa City. As a writer, she explores community, belonging, and the fault lines in the stories we tell each other and ourselves. As an editor, she enjoys being surprised by characters and prose.

Sidekick: Conversation and signing with author Grant Faulkner
2026-09-24 19:00 | Sidekick Coffee & Books, 1310 1/2 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Join Sidekick Coffee and Books for an evening with author Grant Faulkner in conversation with Yasmina Din Madden for his new book Something Out There in the Distance on September 24th at 7 pm.
One book purchase admits two people.
About the book: Flash-fiction master Grant Faulkner and photographer Gail Butensky have partnered to create this unique narrative made up of stories alongside edge-of-the-world photography. The book tells of two lovers taking a reckless, searching road trip through the American West. Dawn is a photographer who captures desert landscapes. Jonny drives just to drive, running away from the end of time or running toward the end of time, looking for a home even as his restlessness overtakes him. By turns funny, poignant, and heartbreaking, something out there is in the distance is big in emotions while brief in words. An extraordinary collaboration between word and image, Dawn and Jonny’s journey transports us to a place, achingly familial, populated by love, loss, and wonder.
About Yasmina Din Madden:
Yasmina Din Madden is the author of the story collection You Know Nothing, Northwestern University Press (2026), and her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Electric Literature, The Idaho Review, The Fairy Tale Review, and other journals. She is the winner of the Oxford Flash Prize and was a finalist for the Iowa Review Award. She teaches creative writing and literature at Drake University.

PorchLight: Flash Forward
2026-10-03 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
2026-10-04 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.

Paul Engle Day
2026-10-12 | IA
In 2000, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack declared Oct. 12 to be “Paul Engle Day,” in honor of the Iowa-born poet who served as head of the Writer’s Workshop from 1942 to 1977, helping to develop it from an obscure experimental program to an internationally renowned literary center.
Check out the City of Literature documentary to learn more about Engle and how Iowa City become the capital of creative writing in America.

Sidekick – Reading and signing with Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
2026-10-15 19:00 | Sidekick Coffee & Books, 1310 1/2 Melrose Avenue, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Join Sidekick Coffee and Books for a reading by author Tatiana Schlote-Bonne for her new book “What Feeds Below.” Purchase of one book admits two guests.
About the book:
The darkness isn’t empty. It’s hungry.
At the edge of the City of the Void, a massive chasm extends miles into the earth, its treacherous terrain overrun with vicious monsters and carnivorous plants. For orphaned best friends Petra and Jade, guiding treasure-seeking tourists down into the Void is the only way to earn enough to pull themselves up out of the slums for good.
Petra prefers to play it safe and take jobs only in the Void’s upper levels, where the dangers are better understood, while Jade wants to risk a decent to the deepest and most mysterious Sixth Layer. Because the deeper they go, the better the payout, and the sooner their dreams can become reality. Their friendship is Petra’s whole world, and Jades approval means everything – so Petra agrees to do it Jade’s way.
When their job goes wring and Jade is lost in the Void, Petra must plunge deeper than she’s ever dared to save her friend. But she doesn’t know the truth of the Void… or what really waits for her in its depths.

Iowa City Book Festival
2026-10-18 - 2026-10-25 | Downtown Iowa City
The Iowa City Book Festival is happening October 18–25, 2026! Join us for a week of literary events, author talks, readings, and more at various locations throughout downtown Iowa City.

Tree Tour: Literary Grove at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop
2026-10-19 12:00 | Dey House, 102 Dey House, Iowa City, IA, 52242, United States
Explore the Literary Grove with University of Iowa Arborist Andy DahlTake a guided stroll through the Literary Grove, where each tree has a story to tell. Arborist Andy Dahl will share the unique histories and literary connections of these remarkable trees, many linked to celebrated authors from the world-renowned Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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.

Megan Greenwell: Bad Company
2026-10-20 19:00 | 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
