PorchLight: Season Pass to the Rooftop Music & Reading Series
2026-06-26 19:00 (America/Chicago) | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
A Magical Melange of Music, Words, and Views

Join PorchLight Literary Arts Center on the deck of MarketHouse for an evening of music, poetry, and prose. The Rooftop Music & Reading Series brings together some of Iowa’s most exciting artists for a one-of-a-kind collaborative program.
Bring a buddy, date, or go alone. Stay for the gorgeous views, drinks, and good company.
Tickets available for purchase on their website: https://www.porchlightliterary.org/event-details/season-pass-to-the-rooftop-music-reading-series-2026-06-26-19-00

Rooftop Music & Reading Series
2026-06-26 19:00 | Market House, 202 N. Linn St., Iowa City, IA, 52240, United States
Join the Porchlight Literary Arts Center on the deck of Market House for an evening of music, poetry, and prose. The Rooftoop Music & Reading Series brings together some of Iowa’s most exciting artists for a one-of-a-kind collaborative program. Bring a buddy, date, or come alone. Stay for the gorgeous views, drinks and good company.
Visit Porchlight Literary Arts Center for tickets and more information.

Writing from Stillness: A Workshop on Mindfulness, Presence, and Creative Clarity
2025-11-16 09:30 - 11:30 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
In her book Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening Our Connection with Ourselves, Each Other, and the Planet, Deborah Eden Tull writes that “Deep listening is an act of love. Listening to life as it unfolds moment by moment, with our full presence, is the essence of meditation.” In this workshop we’ll explore–through writing and mindfulness exercises– how paying close, mindful attention to what’s around us, and within us, can enhance both our writing and our lived experience as creators. We’ll learn how mindful awareness can quiet the inner critic, calm our hearts, sharpen our powers of observation, and deepen our writing practice. With the help of guided meditations and generative writing prompts, participants will leave feeling more grounded, open, and creatively engaged. This workshop may be of benefit to writers, professionals, creatives, journalers, or anyone seeking clarity and calm through mindful writing.
Link: This workshop is free but registration is required.
Instructor Bio:
Stephen Pradarelli is the communications director for the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation, a global Buddhist organization founded by Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. In 2016, he founded Winding Path Sangha, which offers regular sitting and walking meditation opportunities. He’s a former journalist, communications strategist, crisis manager, book editor, essayist, and fiction writer. He’s also a private pilot and loves reading, hiking, traveling, and playing guitar.

Teresa Dzieglewicz: Something Small of How to See a River
2025-10-09 19:00 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
Something Small of How to See a River interrogates the idea of narrative. Who gets to tell a story and what does it mean when the official story, the story told by the governor, the police, or the local media, is a fundamentally dishonest one? The poems collected here meditate on failure: how systems fail us and our environment, how whiteness fails to hold itself accountable, how future generations and the land are being failed—and how, in the face of all this, the Standing Rock movement was not a failure. At the heart of this collection is the strength, care, and radical joy of the movement, which shines through and against the violence.
Teresa Dzieglewicz is a poet, educator, and lover of rivers and prairies. She is a fellow with Black Earth Institute, a Poet-in-Residence at the Chicago Poetry Center, and part of the founding team of Mni Wichoni Nakicizin Wounspe (Defenders of the Water School). She organizes “Watershed: Ways of Knowing the Chicago River” with poet/visual artist, Natasha Mijares. Her first book of poetry, Something Small of How to See a River was selected by Tyehimba Jess for the Dorset Prize. Her first children’s book, co-written with Kimimila Locke, is forthcoming from Chronicle Books. She has won a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, the Gingko Prize, the Auburn Witness Prize, and the Palette Poetry Prize and has received fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, Community of Writers at Tahoe, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and Brooklyn Poets. Her poems appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. Teresa lives with her family in Chicago, on Potawatomi land.

A Lunch and Conversation with Natalie Goldberg
2024-10-20 13:00 - 15:00 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
NOTE: This event is sold out.
Natalie Goldberg has influenced generations of aspiring creative writers with books like Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind. Her books offer down-to-earth guidance for developing a meaningful writing practice in the real world, however different that is for each of us. In her new book, Writing on Empty, she opens up about a new experience; that of losing her will to write, and finding her way back to it. Join Natalie at this limited seating, intimate event. PorchLight director Jennifer Colville will talk with Natalie about how to use her new book. There will be a group conversation and a light lunch. The price of the event includes a copy of “Writing on Empty.”
Natalie Goldberg is the author of fifteen books, including Writing Down the Bones (Shambhala, 1986), which has sold over one million copies, has been translated into fourteen languages, and started a revolution in the way we practice writing in this country.
She recently co-edited a collection of talks by revered zen teacher Katherine Thanas, The Truth of This Life (Shambhala, 2018). In her latest memoir Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home(Shambhala, 2018), she shares her experience with cancer grounded in her practice of zen and writing. Her other books include The Great Spring: Writing, Zen, and This Zigzag Life (Shambhala, 2016), the novel Banana Rose (Bantam, 1995), and the beloved Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America, a memoir about her zen teacher Katagiri Roshi.
Natalie is also a prolific painter. Her book Living Color: Painting, Writing, and the Bones of Seeing (Abrams, 2014), describes painting as her second art form. Top of My Lungs (Overlook Press, 2004) contains forty poems, twenty of her paintings in color, and an essay, “How Poetry Saved My Life.” Natalie’s paintings are available to view on this website.
For more than forty years Natalie has practiced zen and taught seminars in writing as a practice. People from around the world attend her life-changing workshops, and she has earned a reputation as a great teacher. The Oprah Winfrey Show sent a film crew to spend the day with Natalie for a segment on Spirituality that covered her writing, teaching, painting, and walking meditation. She lives in Northern New Mexico.
Ticket link: https://www.porchlightliterary.org/event-details/a-lunch-and-conversation-with-natalie-goldberg

Nancy Miller Gomez – Inconsolable Objects – Reading and Workshop
2024-10-16 19:00 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
Nancy Miller Gomez grew up in Kansas, but currently lives in Santa Cruz, California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, The Adroit Journal, Shenandoah, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Massachusetts Review, River Styx, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology and her chapbook, Punishment, was published as part of the Rattle chapbook series. She co-founded an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men and has taught poetry in Salinas Valley State Prison, the Santa Cruz County Jails and the Juvenile Hall.
Presented in partnership with Porchlight Literary Arts Center

Open House Party at PorchLight Literary Arts Center
2023-10-14 18:00 - 20:00 | PorchLight Literary Arts Center, 1019 E Washington St, Iowa City, 52240, United States
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.
