This event has passed
Book Matters Event: Tisa Bryant and Sarah Minor
Past event
Featured Book
Residual
"In the aftermath of her mother's death, Tisa Bryant's Residual retrieves and catalogs what remains of her home, her psyche, and her creative practice. She filters through the remnants of her mother's everyday life, asking what becomes an archive--a bookshelf, a dresser, a relationship, a secret? Drawing on personal memories as well as archives of renowned Black women who died prematurely--including playwright Lorraine Hansberry and science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler--Bryant's hybrid memoir details the intimate accretion of ephemera, outrage, and failure in the wake of loss." -- Publisher's website
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
Also Featured
Carousel: An Essay on Seeing
"Carousel opens as a professor begins delivering a slide lecture in a darkened room. Her students are visible on Zoom, internet in their pockets, screens on their wrists, seeing more than students ever could before. But what, in fact, do they see? In the spirit of John Berger's Ways of Seeing, Sarah Minor's Carousel considers how the pursuit of panoramic vision frames power, distorts reality, and implicates both viewer and subject. Across short, immersive sections blending history and memoir, close looking and confession, educator and writer Minor masterfully fuses the slide carousel with the lyric essay. As professor-narrator she invites us to see across time, guiding us from the Bayeux Tapestry to surrealist paintings and Instagram reels, from hot-air balloons to drone warfare and the surveillance state. In language that captures the disorientation of that other carousel, the whirling carnival ride, Minor shows how the more we strive to see, the more we ultimately reveal ourselves"--
About This Event
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.
Featured Authors
Bryant, Tisa
Tisa Bryant is the author of Unexplained Presence, a collection of hybrid essays on Black presences in film, literature and visual art. She is co-editor of the cross-referenced literary journal, The Encyclopedia Project, and collaborates with Ernest Hardy on The Black Book series of visual mixtape love letters to black people and black culture, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. She has written for shows and catalogs for artists Jacob Mason-Macklin, Cauleen Smith, Laylah Ali, and Wura-Natasha Ogunji, among others, and has work forthcoming in Brink. She is an assistant professor in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.
Minor, Sarah
Sarah Minor is the author of two previous books, Bright Archive and Slim Confessions: The Universe as a Spider or Spit, as well as the chapbook The Persistence of the Bonyleg: Annotated. She teaches writing at the University of Iowa. Minor lives in Iowa City, IA.
About the Venue
Prairie Lights Books
Prairie Lights sprang to life in May 1978 as a small, intimate bookstore offering titles by the newer voices of Raymond Carver and Alice Munro and by established authors like Eudora Welty and George Orwell. As the staff and customers tended the books with care much like a garden, the store grew and blossomed. By 1982 Prairie Lights transplanted itself from South Linn St. to South Dubuque and has gradually spread to three and a half floors, the half being an 1100 square foot coffee house located in the same space that the local literary society met throughout the 1930's, hosting writers Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Sherwood Anderson, Langston Hughes, E.E Cummings and others. Gertrude Stein and friend Alice B. Toklas were scheduled for a reading but were sleeted in at Waukesha airport-- or so the story goes. Perhaps the strength of reputation lies in the reading series of local, national and international writers who have read their works which were broadcast live on stations WSUI and WOI and which was the only regular literary series of its kind. All of this could not have been possible without a loyal customer base and a dedicated staff. We thank our customers for their continued support, and welcome our new customers.
Visit store pageMore at Prairie Lights Books
Jamie Brooks - The Fleeing Season
In a special event organized by University of Iowa Press, author Jamie Brooks will read from her new memoir, The Fleeing Season: An American Mother's Migration Toward Safety and Justice. The Fleeing Season is the first book in the Locating Reproductive Justice Series, edited by Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz and Lina Murillo and published by University of Iowa Press, which explores reproductive justice within and beyond US borders to center global, transnational, regional, and local conversations on reproductive justice as theory and practice.
Katherine Gibbel & Alyssa Moore - Little Sound, Come Again
Katherine Gibbel will read from her debut poetry collection, Little Sound, and Alyssa Moore will read from her debut poetry collection, Come Again.
Julie Orringer in conv with Sam Chang - Luna, Phoenix, Queen
Julie Orringer will read from her new novel, Luna, Phoenix, Queen, which was named a Kirkus Prize Finalist, and she will be joined in conversation with Iowa Writers' Workshop Director, Lan Samantha Chang.