Past Events

Prairie Lights Books

Nov13

PastAuthor EventEssayIowa City, IA

Book Matters Event: Tisa Bryant and Sarah Minor

7:00 PM • Friday, November 13, 2026Prairie Lights BooksFree

Join Tisa Bryant, associate professor of English, and Sarah Minor, assistant professor of English, as they read from their latest books and discuss the themes that shape their work. This event is free and open to the public. Bryant will read from her new book, Residual. Through a series of genre-crossing essays, she explores the aftermath of her mother’s death, examining what remains of her home, psyche, and creative practice. Blending memoir with archival reflection, Bryant draws on personal memories and the lives of Black women, including Lorraine Hansberry and Octavia E. Butler to consider grief, memory, and what endures after loss.

Nov12

PastAuthor EventArtIowa City, IA

Wanda Corn - The Couple With the Pitchfork [at the James]

5:30 PM • Thursday, November 12, 2026The James TheaterFree

The event is organized by the University of Iowa's Grant Wood Art Colony, the James P. Hayes Foundation, and ICON.Award-winning art historian Wanda M. Corn will read from her new book, The Couple With the Pitchfork: American Gothic from Easel to Icon, at The James Theater, sponsored by The Grant Wood Society. Described as "A rich, evolving history of one of the most recognized couples in the world," The Couple With the Pitchfork is "A highly readable and personalized study of a painter and the work he would forever be tied to" (https://press.princeton.edu).Wanda Corn’s scholarship, as well as her teaching, has focused on art and artists of the American Gilded Age, early twentieth-century avant-garde modernist culture along the Atlantic rim, and American artists commonly identified as regionalists. She named and defined the American Tonalist movement and has renewed interest in forgotten artists such as Grant Wood and the women artists who produced murals for the 1893 World’s Fair. Working across the boundaries of the academy and the museum, her books have accompanied and initiated major exhibitions. In her curatorial practices, she was an early adopter of extended wall labels and contextualizing ephemera and material culture. Her travelling exhibition on Georgia O’Keeffe, supported by a Mellon Emeritus grant, pioneered in showcasing not only works of art but examples of clothing drawn from the artist’s distinctive wardrobe and photographs demonstrating her singular style of modeling for the camera. Corn’s research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, The Center for Advanced Study at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Clark Art Institute, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Research Center (https://art.stanford.edu/people/wanda-m-corn).

Nov11

PastAuthor EventLiterary FictionIowa City, IA

Suzanne McConnell - If You Think Your Heart Can Take It and Other Stories

7:00 PM • Wednesday, November 11, 2026Prairie Lights BooksFree

Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Suzanne McConnell will read from her new story collection, If You Think Your Heart Can Take It and Other Stories. Pamela Ryder, Author of Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him: The Lives of Billy the Kid​​, praises If You Think Your Heart Can Take It by saying: "Don’t miss reading these stories. Each is an alchemist’s stone transforming the ordinariness of everyday life into literary truth and artistry." Meanwhile, Joan Leegant, author of Displaced Persons, winner of the New American Press Fiction Prize, says: "McConnell is a master of precision. Her prose shines on the page. This collection gloriously pushes the boundaries of the form."Suzanne McConnell is the author of Pity The Reader: On Writing with Style, by Kurt Vonnegut and Suzanne McConnell. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her stories, essays, and poems have appeared and won prizes in many publications. She has been granted residencies at Ucross Foundation, the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and Villa Montalvo Center for the Arts. She taught writing and literature at Hunter College for thirty years and was the Fiction Editor at Bellevue Literary Review for 20 years. McConnell holds an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA in Sociology from the University of Arkansas, where she started writing. She grew up in San Diego and lives in New York City and Wellfleet, Massachusetts with her husband, visual artist Gary Kuehn.

Nov10

PastAuthor EventMemoirIowa City, IA

Hannah Bonner in conv with Louisa Hall - Bree: An Autobiography

7:00 PM • Tuesday, November 10, 2026Prairie Lights BooksFree

Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Hannah Bonner will read from her new book Bree: An Autobiography, and will be joined in conversation with Louisa Hall. University of Iowa Associate Professor and fellow Writers' Workshop graduate Bennett Sims offers the following introduction for Bree: "In Klute, Bree Daniels became one of the most memorable voices in film noir. In Bree: An Autobiography, Hannah Bonner has become one of the most memorable voices in whatever genre this book has invented. A deft hybrid of film theory, fiction, memoir, and persona poetry, which stylishly combines Bree’s brio with Bonner’s own, the book delivers a virtuosic performance of ventriloquism and insight, projecting the reader deep inside the mind inside the screen. The result is more than a brilliant debut: it’s an instant classic of cinema fiction and creative criticism, to be shelved alongside works like Gabriel Blackwell’s Madeleine E. and Tisa Bryant’s Unexplained Presence" (https://stickingplacebooks.com/books/bree-an-autobiograpy).Also, Melissa Febos, national bestselling author of Girlhood and The Dry Season, praises Bree as: "An arresting and elegant fictional memoir whose execution is as brilliant as its concept. I've never read anything like it."Hannah Bonner is a writer, film programmer, and educator. She was a 2023-2024 National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critics Fellow and the 2024-2025 CLAS Visiting Writer in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Iowa. Currently, she serves as the Editor-in-Chief for Brink as well as the Film Editor for TriQuarterly, and her writing has been supported by the Breadloaf Environmental Writers' Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, among others. She received The Robert B. Heilman Award for her review of Heather Lewis's Notice in the 2024 issue of The Sewanee Review. She is the author of Another Woman (EastOver Press 2024) and Bree: An Autobiography (Sticking Place Books 2026). She lives in Philadelphia. Louisa Hall's novels include Reproduction, Trinity and Speak. Reproduction (Ecco, 2023), is the story of a woman attempting to write a novel about Mary Shelley, then turning, instead, to write a contemporary Frankenstein. Trinity was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Award and the winner of the Langum Prize for historical fiction; Speak was a Best Book of the Year in NPR, Slate, the Washington Post, and Men's Journal. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic and The Southwest Review, and other journals, and my essays have appeared in the New York Times, LARB, Slate, The MIT Technology Review, and Texas Monthly.

Nov9

PastAuthor EventFictionIowa City, IA

Keith Lesmeister in conv with Andre Perry - Ask Me About the Money

7:00 PM • Monday, November 9, 2026Prairie Lights BooksFree

Keith Lesmeister will read from his new book, Ask Me About the Money, and will be joined in conversation with Andre Perry. Keith provides the following introduction to his own story collection: "A collection of stories that tracks everyday moments, decisions, and complications with money. A father-and-son duo investigate a bad check. A husband and wife drive thirty miles to use a free beer coupon. One character, living in a motel, is offered unsavory work opportunities. With profound empathy, searing details, and propulsive scenes, these stories introduce situations at once simple and profound, strange and familiar—lives upturned because of a misstep, a miscalculation, or a blatant act. Money takes center stage, but these stories include a host of other themes: family and relationships, Midwestern woes, and racial identity. From railroad tracks, to cheap motels, from garage sales to cow pastures, Keith Pilapil Lesmeister tunes our hearts to the powerful frequency of money" (https://keithlesmeister.com/books/ask-me-about-the-money/).Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the story collections Ask Me About the Money and We Could’ve Been Happy Here. A graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars, his work has received support from the Anderson Center, Iowa Arts Council, and Springboard for the Arts. His fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, december magazine, Gettysburg Review, New Stories from the Midwest, North American Review, Redivider, Terrain, and elsewhere. He’s a founding editor of Cutleaf and teaches at Northeast Iowa Community College.Andre Perry is the executive director of Hancher Auditorium and the Office of Performing Arts and Engagement at the University of Iowa. Perry previously served as executive director of The Englert Theatre in Iowa City, during which time he helped elevate the theater’s profile into a nationally recognized, locally valued arts venue.

Nov8

PastAuthor EventScienceIowa City, IA

Peggy Timm - Childhood Cancer: One Family's Journey Through the Storm (rescheduled)

2:00 PM • Sunday, November 8, 2026Prairie Lights BooksFree

Peggy Timm will read from her new book, Childhood Cancer: One Family's Journey Through the Storm. Described by publisher Jewell Jordan as "a non-fiction book written by a mom," Childhood Cancer tells Timm's story of her daughter Alicia, who at 20 months old was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness–neuroblastoma. "The book is designed to give parents in a similar situation a sense of what they might face, offer them hope, and assure them they are not alone on this journey...[It also] addresses a myriad of issues, including: understanding a diagnosis–the medical terms as well as what it might mean for your child–how to move forward after the diagnosis, the impact on siblings, the importance of support from family, friends and the community, faith, children who lose the battle, and when hopelessness turns into hope" (jewelljordanpublishing.com). Peggy Timm was raised on a typical small Iowa farm by loving parents who instilled a strong, honest work ethic. She is the proud mother of three, along with her husband, Dick, of 52 years. Together, they raised three accomplished, successful adult children – Tony, Andy and Alicia. She has for a long time enjoyed flower gardening, sewing, and making Memory Bears for those that have lost loved ones. After being employed at The University of Iowa for 38 years, now retired, she has continued to work part-time at the College of Law, and she enjoys a little travel with Dick and close friends.

Nov5

PastAuthor EventNon-FictionIowa City, IA

Alia Hanna Habib - Take it From Me

7:00 PM • Thursday, November 5, 2026Prairie Lights BooksFree

Alia Hanna Habib will read from her new book, Take It From Me: An Agent's Guide to Building a Nonfiction Writing Career from Scratch. The following introduction says everything you need to know about Take It From Me:"Alia Hanna Habib remembers what it was like to be on the outside of the publishing world, looking in. Arriving in New York, a first-generation college student with a love of reading and loads of ambition, she had no idea how to break into the business of books. Now, years later, in her career as an agent, she hears from prospective clients who, whether they’re experts at the top of their fields or wholly new to the writing game, consider finding success in publishing to be a mysterious and daunting endeavor. Ever determined to flout the stereotype of agent as gatekeeper, however, Habib is prepared to hand emerging writers the key" (https://www.aliahannahabib.com/gallery). Kirkus praises Take It From Me as "A fascinating braid of personal guidance and practitioner interviews . . . Habib[’s] counsel, presented with the clear-eyed pragmatism (but none of the cynicism) of an industry veteran, stands out in a congested market of books on writing."Alia Hanna Habib is a Vice President and literary agent at The Gernert Company, where she represents MacArthur Fellows, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, National Book Award finalists, and numerous New York Times bestselling authors. She was profiled by New York Magazine for their special issue on “The 49 Most Powerful New Yorkers (You’ve Never Heard Of).” She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Nov4

PastAuthor EventFictionIowa City, IA

Tom Drury - West of Loveland

7:00 PM • Wednesday, November 4, 2026Prairie Lights BooksFree

Tom Drury will read from his newest novel, West of Loveland. Rachel Connolly, author of Lazy City, describes West of Loveland as a place of "rural America [that] has a dreamlike, Lynchian quality." Pulitzer Prize winning author Yiyun Li praises West of Loveland as having "a wry humor" and adds: "Drury has delivered in West of Loveland a memorable novel that will make the world a less lonely and more mysterious place."Tom Drury is the author of five previous novels, including Pacific, long-listed for the National Book Award, and The End of Vandalism, named one of the best books of the past 45 years by GQ Magazine in 2002. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper’s, and A Public Space, and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, and MacDowell. He lives in Iowa City.