BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature - ECPv5.16.1.1//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature
REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H
X-Robots-Tag:noindex
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Chicago
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0600
TZOFFSETTO:-0500
TZNAME:CDT
DTSTART:20260308T080000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0500
TZOFFSETTO:-0600
TZNAME:CST
DTSTART:20261101T070000
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20260921T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260921T190000
DTSTAMP:20260920T234756
CREATED:20260904T020836Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260904T020836Z
UID:6069-1790017200-1790017200@www.iowacityofliterature.org
SUMMARY:PrairieLights: Peter Bognanni in conv with Daniel Khalastchi – How to Lose Yourself Completely
DESCRIPTION:Writers’ Workshop graduate Peter Bognanni will read from his new novel\, How to Lose Yourself Completely\, and will be joined in conversation with Daniel Khalastchi. Bognanni’s publisher offers this description of How to Lose Yourself Completely: “A teen grappling with grief and anxiety is sent to wilderness “adventure therapy\,” where he meets a group of friends—and a girl from his past—who will change his life forever. This captivating novel is perfect for fans of Jandy Nelson and John Green.” It’s praised by Kirkus as “a gripping adventure and a deeply affecting exploration of grief and mental health\,” while Abdi Nazemian\, Stonewall and Lambda Award-winning author of Like a Love Story and Only This Beautiful Moment\, says: “Peter Bognanni’s How to Lose Yourself Completely is a book to lose yourself in\, completely. Through stunning prose\, this novel of uncommon depth and astounding empathy will take you on a powerful and hopeful adventure into the human heart that will leave you breathless.” \nPeter Bognanni’s first novel\, The House of Tomorrow\, won the L.A. Times Book Award for First Fiction and was adapted into a feature film starring Ellen Burstyn and Nick Offerman. His second novel\, Things I’m Seeing Without You\, was published in four countries and is currently in development for television. Peter teaches Creative Writing at Macalester College. \nDaniel Khalastchi is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of four acclaimed books of poetry. His most recent collection\, The Story of Your Obstinate Survival\, received the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry and was longlisted for the PEN/Volecker Award for Poetry. A former visiting faculty member at UT Austin’s Michener Center for Writers\, Daniel currently lives in Iowa City where he is the executive director of the University of Iowa’s Office of Writing and Communication and the cofounder and managing editor of Rescue Press. His fifth book\, And the Tribulation Cometh Upon You\, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press.
URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/prairielights-peter-bognanni-in-conv-with-daniel-khalastchi-how-to-lose-yourself-completely/
LOCATION:Prairie Lights Books\, 15 S. Dubuque St.\, Iowa City\, IA\, 52240\, United States
CATEGORIES:General
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/9781250409348.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20260922T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260922T190000
DTSTAMP:20260920T234756
CREATED:20260811T162715Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260811T162715Z
UID:5855-1790103600-1790103600@www.iowacityofliterature.org
SUMMARY:Prairie Lights: Katie Bennett in conversation with Nina Lohman & Alisha Jeddeloh
DESCRIPTION: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. \nBennett’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.” \nKatie 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. \nNina 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. \nAlisha 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.
URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/prairie-lights-katie-bennett-in-conversation-with-nina-lohman-alisha-jeddeloh/
LOCATION:Prairie Lights Books\, 15 S. Dubuque St.\, Iowa City\, IA\, 52240\, United States
CATEGORIES:General
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/she-was-wild-grasscover.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20260923T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260923T190000
DTSTAMP:20260920T234756
CREATED:20260904T021126Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260904T021126Z
UID:6072-1790190000-1790190000@www.iowacityofliterature.org
SUMMARY:PrairieLights: Book Matters Event: Kathy Lavezzo & William Rhodes in conv with Sarah Bond – Bad Medievalism & Work of Reform
DESCRIPTION:Join them for a special University of Iowa Book Matters event! University of Iowa Professor Kathy Lavezzo will read from her new book\, Bad Medievalism and the Modernity Problem\, and Iowa Assistant Professor William Rhodes will read from his newest book\, The Work of Reform: Literature and Political Ecology from Langland to Spenser. They will be joined in conversation with Associate Professor\, Sarah E. Bond. \nKathy Lavezzo regularly teaches the English Department’s large introductory lecture course\, Foundations of the English Major\, with an eye toward the centrality of narrative to the human experience and the capacity of literary texts to move readers and solicit passionate attachment. She was trained as a medievalist and offers courses on medieval romance\, Arthurian lore\, the author known alternately as the Pearl-poet or the Gawain-poet\, The Book of Margery Kempe (the first autobiography in English)\, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s masterpiece\, the Canterbury Tales.  Of late\, her research has moved into more contemporary eras\, a shift that has inspired her to teach classes about authors including Paule Marshall\, Stuart Hall\, W.E.B. Du Bois\, and Kazuo Ishiguro. \nWilliam Rhodes’ work focuses on the connections among medieval/Renaissance poetry\, economics\, and the environment. His book\, The Work of Reform: Literature and Political Ecology from Langland to Spenser (Cornell 2025)\, considers how medieval poetry about agrarian work informed early colonial ideologies in the sixteenth century. His current research project is on apocalypticism\, literary form\, and economic crisis in late medieval and early modern literature. He teaches classes on medieval and early modern poetry and drama\, as well as courses on critical theory and environmental literature. \nSarah E. Bond is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Iowa. She is interested in late Roman history\, epigraphy\, late antique law\, Roman topography and GIS\, Digital Humanities\, and the socio-legal experience of ancient marginal peoples. She earned a PhD in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2011) and obtained a BA in Classics and History with a minor in Classical Archaeology from the University of Virginia (2005). Her book\, Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professionals in the Roman Mediterranean\, was published with the University of Michigan Press in 2016.
URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/prairielights-book-matters-event-kathy-lavezzo-william-rhodes-in-conv-with-sarah-bond-bad-medievalism-work-of-reform/
LOCATION:Prairie Lights Books\, 15 S. Dubuque St.\, Iowa City\, IA\, 52240\, United States
CATEGORIES:General
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20260927T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20260927T160000
DTSTAMP:20260920T234756
CREATED:20260904T021511Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260904T021511Z
UID:6074-1790524800-1790524800@www.iowacityofliterature.org
SUMMARY:PrairieLights: IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series
DESCRIPTION:Join them for their annual IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series! This week’s event features IWP Residents Monique Malcher (Brazil)\, Wame M. Molefhe (Botswana)\, and Lien Ming-wei (Taiwan). They will be joined by Iowa Writers’ Workshop Poetry candidate\, Aditya Menon. \nMonique Malcher is a writer\, journalist\, and visual artist born in Santarém\, in western Pará\, Brazil. She holds a Master’s degree in Anthropology (UFPA) and an Interdisciplinary PhD in Human Sciences with a focus on gender studies (UFSC). She currently resides in São Paulo. Her first book\, Flor de Gume (Moinhos Publishing)\, won the Jabuti Literature Prize in 2021 in the short story category. Malcher is the second woman from northern Brazil to win a Jabuti in the literature category. Flor de Gume was also published under the title Flor de Filo by Fondo de Cultura Económica in Mexico (2025). Her first novel\, Degola (2025)\, was released by Companhia das Letras (1st edition) and is already in its second reprint. \nWame M. Molefhe is a Botswana-born writer based in Gaborone. She writes across fiction\, film\, and television. Her published works include two short story collections and a debut novel shortlisted for the Island Prize for a Debut Novel (2025). She is a Civitella Ranieri fellow (2016). She is the founder of AgaMotse\, a Centre for the Arts. \nLien Ming-wei (fiction writer\, nonfiction writer; Taiwan) is the author of one work of reportage and four novels. His writing primarily focuses on fiction and has earned him several literary awards. He has published books such as Tomato Avenue and Other Coming-of-Age Stories (番茄街游擊戰)\, Son of the Green Cicadidae (青蚨子)\, The Confession of Blueberry Nights (藍莓夜的告白)\, Duty Officers of the Mountain and Sea: A Record of Toucheng Professionals (山與海的職日生：頭城職人誌)\, and Gunner\, Snatcher\, Robber\, and Provoker (槍強搶嗆). \nAditya Menon is from Kodaikanal\, India. His work has appeared in Peripheries\, Colorado Review\, Dialogist and elsewhere.
URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/prairielights-iwp-sunday-afternoon-reading-series-4/
LOCATION:Prairie Lights Books\, 15 S. Dubuque St.\, Iowa City\, IA\, 52240\, United States
CATEGORIES:General
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261002T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261002T190000
DTSTAMP:20260920T234756
CREATED:20260904T022233Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260904T022233Z
UID:6079-1790967600-1790967600@www.iowacityofliterature.org
SUMMARY:PrairieLights: Nicholas Russell in conv with Tony Tulathimutte – Observer
DESCRIPTION:Nicholas Russell will read from his new novel\, Observer\, and will be joined in conversation with 2026 Iowa Writers’ Workshop Visiting Associate Professor (and Writers’ Workshop graduate) Tony Tulathimutte. Publisher Ecco Press describes Observer as “A disquieting\, atmospheric debut horror novel about a young woman investigating her mother’s disappearance at an abandoned Nevada observatory\, for fans of Jeff VanderMeer and Mariana Enriquez\,” and it’s praised by Danzy Senna\, author of New People and Colored Television\, as “coiled\, restrained\, beautiful\, and haunting…The result is deeply unsettling\, urgent\, dark\, and wry.” \nNicholas Russell is a writer and editor from Las Vegas. His work has been featured in The Believer\, McSweeney’s\, The Yale Review\, Reverse Shot\,The Point\, The Baffler\, The Nation\, and Dirt\, among other publications. He’s attended Short Fiction workshops at VQR and Tin House\, as well as the Critics Academy for the New York Film Festival and the Press Inclusion Initiative at the Sundance Film Festival. He’s also received support from MacDowell and the Nes Artist Residency (adapted from nicholasrussell.me/about). \nTony Tulathimutte’s novel Private Citizens was called “the first great millennial novel” by New York Magazine. A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop\, he has written for The New York Times\, VICE\, WIRED\, The New Yorker\, The Atlantic\, The New Republic\, N+1\, Playboy\, The Paris Review\, and many others. He has received a 2017 Whiting Award\, an O. Henry Award\, and a MacDowell Fellowship\, and appeared as a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers (writersworkshop.uiowa.edu).
URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/prairielights-nicholas-russell-in-conv-with-tony-tulathimutte-observer/
LOCATION:Prairie Lights Books\, 15 S. Dubuque St.\, Iowa City\, IA\, 52240\, United States
CATEGORIES:General
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/81RjoglX6VL._AC_UF10001000_QL80_.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261004T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261004T160000
DTSTAMP:20260920T234756
CREATED:20260904T022515Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260904T022515Z
UID:6082-1791129600-1791129600@www.iowacityofliterature.org
SUMMARY:PrairieLights: IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series
DESCRIPTION:Join them for their annual IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series! This week’s event features IWP Residents Sang Young Park (South Korea) and Yaiza Berrocal Guevara (Spain). They will be joined by Iowa Writers’ Workshop Fiction candidate\, Toye Oladinni\, and Associate Director of Writing Education for the Office of Writing and Communication at the University of Iowa\, Danielle Wheeler. \nSangyoung Park is a prominent South Korean novelist and screenwriter\, internationally recognized for his sharp emotional insight\, wit\, and nuanced exploration of urban life\, intimacy\, and identity. His bestselling novel\, Love in the Big City\, has been translated into more than twenty languages and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize\, the Dublin Literary Award\, and the Prix Médicis étranger. Beyond the page\, Park has established himself as a versatile creator\, serving as the writer and creator for the global television adaptation of his own work. \nYaiza Berrocal Guevara (playwright\, fiction writer\, screenwriter; Spain) is the author of a novel\, several plays and a screenplay. Her literary work includes Curling (2022)\, published in the UK in 2025 and forthcoming in Greek in 2026. She is currently working on her second novel\, Las promesas. As a playwright\, she received Spain’s Calderón de la Barca National Prize for La cadena del frío\, later staged in Sala Beckett\, Barcelona. Her other plays include Intenta viure sense mi\, Ni temeré les feres\, Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nunca antes representadas (documentary theatre) and Flesh Market. She is also the screenwriter of the animated feature Black Butterflies\, winner of the Goya Award for Best Animated Film\, as well as the Gaudí\, Forqué\, Quirino\, and Platino awards\, and has written for prime-time television series. \nToye Oladinni is a British Nigerian writer and filmmaker from London. His work has appeared in Granta\, The Paris Review Daily\, and The Relegation Reader\, among other places\, and is forthcoming in the London Review of Books. He is currently studying for an MFA in Fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. \nDanielle Wheeler was born in a small town in the Midwest and was the 2010-2011 Rona Jaffe Fellow in Poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop\, an instructor of Creative Writing Studio Workshop for undergraduates\, and a volunteer writing instructor with the Iowa Youth Writing Project. She is currently an instructor of writing and Associate Director\, Writing Education for the Office of Writing and Communication at the University of Iowa. Her first book\, Men of Northern Constellations\, is forthcoming in 2027.
URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/prairielights-iwp-sunday-afternoon-reading-series-5/
LOCATION:Prairie Lights Books\, 15 S. Dubuque St.\, Iowa City\, IA\, 52240\, United States
CATEGORIES:General
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261008T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261008T190000
DTSTAMP:20260920T234756
CREATED:20260904T022741Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260904T022741Z
UID:6084-1791486000-1791486000@www.iowacityofliterature.org
SUMMARY:PrairieLights: Meghan O’Gieblyn in conv with Dr. Alison Lynch – Will and Attention
DESCRIPTION:Meghan O’Gieblyn will read from her new memoir\, Will and Attention\, and will be joined in conversation with Dr. Alison Lynch. Described as a “luminous memoir of secret drinking\, fragile recovery\, and the deep pull of religion\,” Will and Attention is praised by bestselling author Jia Tolentino as “one of the best memoirs of the decade\,” while University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program professor and bestselling author Melissa Febos says: “An elegant and philosophical memoir about addiction whose stakes are no less than what comprises one’s will to live\, what it means to be good\, and the worth of devotion. I savored equally O’Gieblyn’s sentences and the turns of her thought—at once precise as the cut of a razor and as pleasurably discursive as Montaigne.” \nMeghan O’Gieblyn is a writer and the author of God\, Human\, Animal\, Machine\, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science & Technology. Her first book\, Interior States\, won the 2018 Believer Book Award for nonfiction.  Her criticism and essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine\, The New Yorker\, n+1\, The Point\, The Baffler\, Wired\, The New York Review of Books\, The Guardian\, The New York Times\, and other publications. \nAlison Lynch\, MD\, MS\, is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa.
URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/prairielights-meghan-ogieblyn-in-conv-with-dr-alison-lynch-will-and-attention/
LOCATION:Prairie Lights Books\, 15 S. Dubuque St.\, Iowa City\, IA\, 52240\, United States
CATEGORIES:General
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/71rmX6WA5bL._AC_UF10001000_QL80_.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261009T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261009T190000
DTSTAMP:20260920T234756
CREATED:20260904T022938Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260904T022938Z
UID:6087-1791572400-1791572400@www.iowacityofliterature.org
SUMMARY:PrairieLights: Elizabeth Metzger\, Andrew Zawacki\, and Devin Johnston – The Going Is Forever\, These Late Eclipses\, Bright Thorn
DESCRIPTION:Elizabeth Metzger and Iowa Writers’ Worshop graduates\, Andrew Zawacki and Devin Johnston\, will read from their new poetry collections: The Going Is Forever\, These Late Eclipses\, and Bright Thorn\, respectively. \nElizabeth Metzger is the author of The Going Is Forever and Lying In\, as well as The Spirit Papers\, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. She has published two chapbooks\, Bed and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Her poems have recently appeared in The New Yorker\, The Paris Review\, The New York Review\, TLS\, and Poetry. She is a poetry editor at The Los Angeles Review of Books and teaches poetry at 92NY and Columbia University. \nAndrew Zawacki is the author of five poetry books\, including Unsun : f/11 (Coach House\, 2019)\, Videotape (Counterpath\, 2013)\, and Petals of Zero Petals of One (Talisman House\, 2009). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker\, The New Republic\, The Nation\, and elsewhere. An editor and translator\, he is Distinguished Research Professor of English at the University of Georgia. \nDevin Johnston was born in 1970 and spent his childhood in North Carolina. He is the author of seven previous books of poetry and two books of prose\, including Creaturely and Other Essays. He works for Flood Editions\, an independent publishing house\, and teaches at Saint Louis University\, in Missouri\, where he lives.
URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/prairielights-elizabeth-metzger-andrew-zawacki-and-devin-johnston-the-going-is-forever-these-late-eclipses-bright-thorn/
LOCATION:Prairie Lights Books\, 15 S. Dubuque St.\, Iowa City\, IA\, 52240\, United States
CATEGORIES:General
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/9780374608835.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261011T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261011T160000
DTSTAMP:20260920T234756
CREATED:20260904T023206Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260904T023206Z
UID:6090-1791734400-1791734400@www.iowacityofliterature.org
SUMMARY:PrairieLights: IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series
DESCRIPTION:Join them for their annual IWP Sunday Afternoon Reading Series! This week’s event features IWP Residents Radu Vancu (Sibiu\, Romania)\, Harumi Kawaguchi 川口晴美 (Japan)\, and Amber Esau (New Zealand). They will be joined by recent Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate\, Lizzie Cusick. \nRadu Vancu (Sibiu\, Romania\, 1978) is a Romanian poet\, scholar\, and translator. A professor in the Faculty of Letters and Arts at Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu\, he is the editor-in-chief of Transilvania magazine and an editor of Poiesis Internațional. He previously served as as the national editor of the Romanian section of the Poetry International website\, and was president of PEN Romania between 2019–2023. Since 2013\, he has also been president of Sibiu’s international writing festival Poets in Transylvania. Vancu has published nine volumes of poems\, which have been translated into more than 20 languages in anthologies\, magazines\, and books. He has also published two novels\, Transparenta (2018) and Paradis (2025)\, and his first two books of poetry in English translation will be published in the U.S. in October 2026—Kaddish (tr. Sean Cotter\, Zephyr Press) and The Rope in Bloom (tr. Paula Console-Soican and Cyrus Console-Soican\, Phoenix Poets). \nHarumi Kawaguchi 川口晴美 is a poet based in Tokyo. Her latest poetry collection\, やがて魔女の森になる (To the Witches’ Forest\, Shicho-sha\, 2021) received the 30th Hagiwara Sakutarō Prize in 2022\, and her 13th collection\, Tiger is here. (Tiger is here.\, Shicho-sha\, 2015) won the 46th Takami Jun Prize in 2016. Her poetry explores women’s experiences and memory\, while also bridging literature and popular culture\, particularly manga and anime. Her poems have been translated into English\, German\, Italian\, and Korean\, and included in the anthologies such as Poet to Poet: Contemporary Women Poets from Japan (Recent Work Press\, 2017). She is increasingly interested in collaborative poetry translation\, which she started while she was a guest for Poetry on the Move Festival in Canberra in 2017. Her collaborative translations from English to Japanese have been published in the anthologies\, I am Ireland (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade\, Ireland\, 2025) and pleasant troubles (Recent Work Press\, 2018). She has edited several poetry anthologies and has been teaching creative writing over three decades. \nAmber Esau is the author of Hungus\, her debut poetry collection published earlier this year\, and co-editor of a queer poetry anthology\, Spoiled Fruit (2023). She has performed her poetry extensively\, and her work has been published in various journals and anthologies in Aotearoa-New Zealand. She is working on a mixed media speculative fantasy novel set in the South Pacific. \nLizzie Cusick is a poet and dermatologist who recently received her MFA in from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She teaches medical residents and fellows at the University and is interested in writing as a means of attending to both the body and natural world with deep care and close observation. She is currently working on completing her first book of poems for publication.
URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/prairielights-iwp-sunday-afternoon-reading-series-6/
LOCATION:Prairie Lights Books\, 15 S. Dubuque St.\, Iowa City\, IA\, 52240\, United States
CATEGORIES:General
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Chicago:20261016T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Chicago:20261016T190000
DTSTAMP:20260920T234756
CREATED:20260904T023414Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260904T023414Z
UID:6092-1792177200-1792177200@www.iowacityofliterature.org
SUMMARY:PrairieLights: Emily Ogden – Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe
DESCRIPTION:Emily Ogden will read from her new book\, Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe. Described as “A fascinating and intimate inquiry into Edgar Allan Poe’s shadowy life and horrifyingly compelling work” (penguinrandomhouse.com)\, Darkness Becomes Bright is praised by Meghan O’Rourke\, author of The Invisible Kingdom\, as “profoundly insightful\,” while Sarah Waters\, author of The Paying Guests\, says: “A wonderfully engaging account of Poe’s troubled life and work that is also a celebration of artistic cross-fertilization. Nimble\, generous\, brimming with insight\, Ogden’s book captures the richness\, the strangeness and the unexpected beauty to be found in our enduring fascination with the dark places of the soul.” \nEmily Ogden is the author of On Not Knowing: How to Love and Other Essays and Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship\, a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant\, and a Mellon Fellowship in the Columbia Society of Fellows\, she is a professor of English at the University of Virginia.
URL:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/event/prairielights-emily-ogden-darkness-becomes-bright-on-the-brief-life-and-immortal-art-of-edgar-allan-poe/
LOCATION:Prairie Lights Books\, 15 S. Dubuque St.\, Iowa City\, IA\, 52240\, United States
CATEGORIES:General
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.iowacityofliterature.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/9780593832509.jpeg
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR