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 2023 Selected Poets. Iowa Student Poet Ambassador, Lola Nakashima-Brooke, will open the event. This event is live and in-person, and will be streamed live at: https://www.youtube.com/thelibrarychannel      

In every corner of this universe, there is a story waiting to be heard. Join the students of the Literary Translation MFA as they gather and read excerpts from their translations of world literature. In collaboration with Exchanges Literary Journal, the inaugural session of this reading series celebrates the 60th anniversary of the Iowa Translation Workshop.

Nathan Hill’s best-selling debut novel, The Nix, was named the number one book of 2016 by Entertainment Weekly and one of the year’s best books by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Slate, and many others. The native Iowan returns with Wellness. Moving from the gritty ’90s Chicago art scene to a suburbia

Kristen Roupenian holds a PhD in English from Harvard, an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan, and a BA from Barnard College. She is the author of the short story, “Cat Person,” which was published in The New Yorker. She will read from her short story collection, Cat Person.

Justin Torres is the author of We the Animals, which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was translated into fifteen languages, and was adapted into a feature film. A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he will read from and discuss his new book, Blackouts. Fellow Workshop graduate Jamel Brinkley will moderate.

Stop by the lobby of the Iowa City Public Library between festival events to browse for a new (to you) book.