"Live From Prairie Lights is a first -- broadcasting a live radio program from an independent bookstore, which showcases the latest talents of established and new writers from here and aroundthe world. When doing a live show you never know what to expect. The potential for surprising, interesting, and profound moments is always there--we've experienced many throughout the years. As host, I enjoy being a catalyst, a bridge in the relationship between author and audience. That's what public radio is supposed to do, draw the public into an event, a place, a moment that touches them, teaches them, entertains and involves them. It's wonderful welcoming listeners, authors and audience members into this special public radio program."

--Julie Englander, Host, Live from Prairie Lights

Live From Prairie Lights Archives 2008

Joshua Casteel
Joshua Casteel read from Letters From Abu Ghraib, a collection of his email correspondence during the time he spent in Abu Ghraib prison as an Arabic translator and US army interrogator. Casteel brings the moral and religious foundation of his youth head to head with the hushed atrocities of our present day military. Letters From Abu Ghraib is a thoughtful illustration of one man’s struggle between his sense of duty as a soldier and his morality as a human.

Max Allan Collin
Genre renaissance man Max Allan Collins pens is latest book under the name of Patrick Culhane. It is called, Red Sky in Morning. Drawing on the war experiences of his father, Culhane tells the story of a Midwestern musician called up after Pearl Harbor. Culhane melds shipboard melodrama, WWII action, and solid amateur sleuthing into an infectiously readable adventure.

James Douglass
James Douglass discussed his book of nonfiction, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters. Douglass offers a compelling account of how the late President turned from a traditional Cold Warrior to one who yearned for peace. Douglass challenges readers to connect the dots of the President’s life from the events of the infamous Bay of Pigs to the week before his alarming assassination, and see the transformation that took place in how JFK viewed the world. Audio of JFK is included in this program.

Nancy Horan
Bestsellling author Nancy Horan read from her new novel, Loving Frank. In the early 1900s, married architect Frank Lloyd Wright eloped to Europe with Mamah Cheney, the wife of one of his clients. The scandal rocked the suburb of Oak Park, Illinois. This is the story of that affair and its results. “I adore this novel, for so many reasons,” says Elizabeth Berg. “The intelligence and lyricism of the prose, the attention to period detail, and the epic proportions of this most fascinating love story. Mamah Cheney has been in my head, heart and soul since reading this book; I doubt she’ll ever leave.”

Brett Anthony Johnson
Brett Anthony Johnson, author of the stunning short–story collection, Corpus Christi, read from and discussed his new book, Naming The World:
Exercises for the Creative Writer. This interactive book includes entries from 65 writers—including Joyce Carol Oates, Dorothy Allison and Tom Robbins. “A highly useful and perceptive book. With charm and intelligence it touches on nearly every teachable aspect of the devilishly difficult art of writing.” —Ethan Canin, professor of creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and author of Carry Me Across the Water.

Charles Holdefer
Charles Holdefer read from his new novel, The Contractor, the story of a US Government interrogator at a holding facility for suspected terrorists. A timely and critical examination of the interrogation camps run by the U.S. military, this dramatic thriller is also a finely tuned character study of a man in personal crisis. “An impressive and moving portrayal of the secret detention and interrogation system.” —Margaret Satterthwaite, Director of The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU Law School.

Charles Leerhsen
Charles Leerhsen disucssed and read from his new work of nonfiction, Crazy Good: The Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America.
"In this spirited narrative, Leerhsen, an editor at "Sports Illustrated", tells the now-forgotten saga of Dan Patch, a race horse that at one time drew an estimated 60,000 people to a single event in 1903. Admitting from the outset that the events of this book may seem as if they transpired on another planet, Leerhsen delivers a mesmerizing look into a strange corner of American sports and folk history when Dan Patch became a household word, earning roughly $1 million a year at a time when, Leerhsen notes, the-highest paid baseball player, Ty Cobb, was making $12,000. But the heart of the book is Dan Patch himself, a horse with an almost human capacity for calm and determination that deserves to be rediscovered by a modern audience." —Publisher's Weekly

Michael Pritchett
Michael Pritchett read from his novel The Melancholy Fate of Captain Lewis. A novel that finds extraordinary parallels between Captain Lewis’s doubt about manifest destiny and the contemporary uncertainty that surrounds the modern male. Michael Pritchett is also the author of an award-winning collection of stories, The Venus Tree. He teaches fiction writing at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Katie Ford
Poet Katie Ford, a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, read from her new collection, Colosseum. With gravity and resplendence, Colosseum confronts ruin in the ancient world and in the living moment, from historical accounts and from firsthand experience. Displaced from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Katie Ford returns this powerful report attesting to the storm’s ferocity and its aftershock. Ford examines other catastrophes—those biblical, obscured by time, and those that play out daily, irrefutably, in the media. Colosseum is an essential, moving book in its insistence that our fates are intertwined and that devastation does not discriminate.

Gregory Johnson
Gregory Johnson read from Put Your Life on a Diet: Lessons Learned Living in 140 Square Feet. This is the ultimate resource for living a simpler life as well as leaving behind a smaller environmental footprint and a healthier planet.

John T. Price
John T. Price read from his memoir, Man Killed By Pheasants. Author Patricia Hampl says that John Price has written “a powerful inquiry into what it means to be a midwesterner. In a style that replicates the laconic surface and passionate undercurrents of the midwest, he has fashioned a powerful evocation of the land and its European immigrant families.”

Elizabeth Winthrop
Elizabeth Winthrop read from her new novel, December. A spellbinding novel about a troubled young girl and a family in crisis, and a gripping, astonishing portrait of recovery and self-determination. When December opens, eleven year old Isabelle hasn’t spoken a word in nearly a year. Her parents are at once mystified and terrified by their daughter’s withdrawal, and by their own gradually loosening hold on the world as they’ve always known it. Elizabeth Winthrop is also the author of the novel, Fireworks. Currently, she is living and writing in Savannah, Georgia.

Deborah Crombie
Mystery writer Deborah Crombie read from her new novel, Where Memories Lie. Crombie was born and educated in Texas. After living in both England and Scotland, she wrote her first novel, A Share in Death, which was nominated for both an Agatha and a Macavity Award. Her fifth novel, Dreaming of the Bones, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was chosen by the Independent Mystery Booksellers of America as one of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the Century.

June

Lucia Nevai
Lucia Nevai read from her new novel, Salvation, the smart, poignant, and richly imagined coming of age story of Crane Cavanaugh. Born into a family of three former charlatan preachers and two older siblings living in poverty in rural Iowa, Crane is a budding scientist with a rich awareness of the natural world and her own precarious spot in it. “What a fantastic novel. Salvation is an absolute knock out. I read it without stopping (no, really!) and fell in love by the end of the day.” —Alice Sebold

Jana Kohl
Jana Kohl visited the program with her dog Baby to discuss A Rare Breed of Love: The True Story of Baby and the Mission She Inspired to Help Dogs Everywhere. When Jana Kohl learned of the horrors of puppy farms she decided to take action. Her first step was to adopt a rescued adult dog instead of buying a puppy from a commercial breeder. And that’s how she found Baby, a roughly nine-year-old poodle who had been locked in a cage. But Jana’s mission didn’t stop there. Soon, Jana and Baby (whose sweet face and three-legged hobble attract attention wherever she goes) found themselves speaking to groups about the terrible conditions at many breeders’ farms and urging politicians to change the lax laws that regulate this industry. In this heartbreaking, compelling, and ultimately heartwarming book, Jana Kohl and Baby offer practical advice on what each of us can do to raise awareness, make a difference, and stop animal suffering.

Vic Camillo
University of Iowa Mathematics Professor Vic Camillo read from, Death Songs for Africa, his selection of poems in The Lost Horse Press New Poets Series Volume 2, edited by Marvin Bell. Vic Camillo’s mathematical specialty is Abstract Algebra, specifically The Theory of Rings. For thirty years, he and his family have traveled with the Carson and Barnes Circus. They have spent extended periods in Barcelona, London, and small towns in Spain. He writes in bars and cemeteries—and wherever else he is.

Judy Polumbaum
University of Iowa Journalism Professor, Judy Polumbaum discussed, China Ink.: The Changing Face of Chinese Journalism. The book explores changes in contemporary China through the compelling personal accounts of young Chinese journalists. Through a series of engaging oral histories, Judy Polumbaum puts a human face on vital issues of freedom of expression and information that will chart China’s future.

Rebecca Stott
Mystery writer Rebecca Stott read from Ghostwalk, a real historical mystery filled with evocative descriptions of Cambridge, 17th-century glassmaking, and Newton's scientific innovations. "Drawing on alchemy, neurology, animal-rights activism, and supernatural visitations, this debut novel is an ambitious, learned thriller... Stott deploys her research effortlessly." —The New Yorker

Nam Le
Nam Le read from his first collection of short stories, The Boat. A stunningly inventive , deeply moving fiction debut. Nam Le was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia before coming to the United States to attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In stories set in places as diverse as Tehran, Australia, Iowa City and Southeast Asia, Nam Le “not only writes with an authority and poise rare even among longtime authors, but he also demonstrates an intuitive, gut-level ability to convey the psychological conflicts people experience when they find their own hopes and ambitions slamming up against familial expectations or the brute facts of history.” —Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Jeff Shaara
Jeff Shaara, America’s premier author of military historical fiction discussed his latest book, The Steel Wave, the centerpiece of his epic trilogy of the Second World War. General Dwight Eisenhower once again commands a diverse army that must find its single purpose in the destruction of Hitler’s European fortress. From G.I. to general, this story carries the reader through the war’s most crucial juncture, the invasion that altered the flow of the war, and, ultimately, changed history. Shaara's other books include, Gods and Generals, To the Last Man, and The Glorious Cause. Jeff Shaara website.

John Bowe
John Bowe discussed his book, Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy. Most Americans would be shocked to discover that slavery still exists in the United States. Yet most of us buy goods made by people who aren’t paid for their labor–people who are trapped financially, and often physically. In Nobodies, award-winning journalist John Bowe exposes the outsourcing, corporate chicanery, immigration fraud, and sleights of hand that allow forced labor to continue in the United States while the rest of us notice nothing but the everyday low price at the checkout counter.

John Bowe website
The reading was co-sponsored by the Womens’ Resource and Action Center in Iowa City

Michael Martone
Michael Martone read from his work. Marton is the author of—most recently—the essay collection, Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards and Ruins, and the fiction collections Doublewide and Michael Maratone Fictions, originally written as a series of contributor's notes for various publications. It is an investigation of form and autobiography. A former student of John Barth, Martone's work is critically regarded as powerful and funny. Making use of Whitman's catalogues and Ginsberg's lists, the events, moments and places in Martone's landscapes—fiction or otherwise—often take the same Mobius-like turns of the threads found the works of his mentor, Barth.

Mike Farrell
Mike Farrell, aka Cpt B.J. Hunnicutt of M*A*S*H* fame, discussed his memoir, Just Call Me Mike: A Journey from Actor to Activist. Farrell provides intimate accounts of growing up working-class in the shadows of wealthy Hollywood, overcoming personal demons as he starts his acting career and finding happiness in the popular sitcom and what he describes as a supportive and cohesive cast and crew. Throughout the series, Farrell also began to pursue an interest in politics and human rights that took him to Cambodia, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador, and his passionate descriptions of the human rights abuses in those countries show why Farrell currently is considered one of Hollywood's most prominent activists. —Publishers Weekly

Mike Farrell website

Leif Enger
Leif Enger read from his new novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome, a stunning successor to his best selling novel, Peace Like a River. Leif Enger’s new work is a rugged and nimble story about an aging train robber on a quest to reconcile the claims of love and judgment on his life, and the failed writer who goes with him. "At turns merry and wistful, romantic and tragic, So Brave, Young, and Handsome is as absorbing as a campfire tale, full of winking outlaws and relentless villains -the sort of story to keep you on the edge of your seat with hope in your heart." —Daphne Durham

Gigi Durham
University of Iowa professor and journalist M. Gigi Durham discussed her book, The Lolita Effect:The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It. She offers new insight into media myths and spectacles of sexuality. Using examples from popular TV shows, fashion and beauty magazines, movies, and Web sites, Durham shows how sexuality is rigidly and restrictively defined in media—often in ways detrimental to girls’ healthy development. The Lolita Effect offers parents, teachers, counselors, and other concerned adults effective and progressive strategies for resisting the violations and repressions that render girls sexually subordinate. Durham provides us with the tools to navigate this media world effectively without censorship or moralizing, and then to help our girls to do so in strong and empowering ways.

Nina Revoyr
Nina Revoyr read from her new novel, The Age of Dreaming. The story revolves around an aging Japanese silent-film star named Jun Nakayama.
Set in 1964, the story finds Jun living in a small apartment in West Hollywood, forgotten and ignored, a dignified and elderly man whose neighbors have no idea he was once a major Hollywood star with an understated acting style that would later influence the likes of Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando. Jun made his last picture in 1922, and the question that haunts the novel is why Jun gave up such a successful career only to live out his life in obscurity? American attitudes toward the Japanese before World War 1 and after have more than a little to do with this question. Revoyr is also the author of the books, The Necessary Hunger, and Southland.

Keith Gessen
If you live in the city and keep up with literature, then you’ve undoubtedly heard of Keith Gessen's literary journal, n+1, and the wrath that he and his fellow editors have incurred for their anti-McSweeney’s, unabashedly-highbrow take on literature. (New York Inquirer) Putting out a couple thick volumes a year, n+1 has become one of the most talked about literary magazines in recent memory. Gessen's first novel All The Sad Young Literary Men is "shrewd, funny and oddly compassionate though consider yourself blessed if you're not like any of his characters."
—Entertainment Weekly.

Englert Theatre
C.Vivian Stringer
Former University of Iowa head women's basketball coach and current Rutgers coach C.Vivian Stringer visited us while on tour of her book, Standing Tall: A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph. At a time when heroes are too rare, C. Vivian Stringer sets a shining example. She has time and again shown character, fortitude, and heart, both on and off the hardwood, and in the face of unbearable loss. In Standing Tall, she shares her remarkable life story, inspiring us to find this fortitude within ourselves. Standing Tall is a story of quiet strength in the face of punishing odds. Above all, it is an extraordinary love story—love for the game, for the players she has coached, for her close-knit family, and for the husband she lost far too soon. It will resonate long after the last page.

Englert Theatre
Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon is one of the most most celebrated writers of his generation. His first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was published when Chabon was 25 and catapulted him to literary celebrity. He followed it with Wonder Boys (1995), and two short-story collections. In 2000, Chabon published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a critically acclaimed novel that The New York Review of Books called his magnum opus; it received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001. His most recent novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, was published in 2007 to enthusiastic reviews; he is on the the paperback book tour.

Cornelia Mutel
Iowa ecologist Cornelia Mutel read from her new book The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa. "Nature for many today is the drainage creek down the block or the wooded ravine leading away from the highway. /The Emerald Horizon/ rolls back the clock to a time when Iowa was a checkerboard of wetlands that turned seamlessly to oceans of native grasses; when fire, wind, and rivers determined whether prairies or woodlands rose from the rich soil. Mutel shows Iowa as a dynamic, almost breathing life form, altered nearly beyond recognition in just a few decades. This book offers hope for restoring the land but the key will come from those who read this book and take it to heart." —Joe Wilkinson, president, Iowa Wildlife Federation Ecologist Cornelia Mutel is the historian and archivist for IIHR-Hydroscience and Engineering at the University of Iowa College of Engineering. She is the author of Fragile Giants: A Natural History of the Loess Hills (Iowa, 1989), coauthor of From Grassland to Glacier: The Natural History of Colorado and the Surrounding Region, and coeditor of Land of the Fragile Giants: Landscapes, Environments, and Peoples of the Loess Hills (Iowa, 1994) and The Tallgrass Restoration Handbook for Prairies, Savannas, and Woodlands.

Kao Kalia Yang
Kao Kalia Yang read from The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir. Kao Kalia Yang was born in Thailand's Ban Vinai Refugee Camp and immigrated to St. Paul, Minnesota when she was six years old. With a journalist's heart for truth and a storyteller's gift for lyricism, Yang describes her family's harrowing escape from Laos, their life in refugee camps, and her own experiences with American life and learning. "This is the best account of the Hmong experience I've ever read—powerful, heartbreaking, and unforgettable." —Anne Fadiman

Michael Paul Mason
Michael Paul Mason read from Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath. Mason is a brain injury case manager, one of an elite group of experts who rush to the scenes of tragic accidents and coordinate care that can last a lifetime. On the road with Mason, we encounter survivors of brain injuries as they struggle to map and make sense of their new worlds. Underlying each of these personal stories is an exploration of the brain and its mysteries. In Head Cases, Mason gives us a series of vivid glimpses into one of the last frontiers of medicine.

Daniel Mason
Daniel Mason, author of the bestselling, The Piano Tuner, read from his second novel, A Far Country. "This stunning novel traces 14-year-old Isabel's journey through a vast, unnamed country in search of her brother. A Far Country is a book about . . . people who live as subsistence farmers or flee their land to scrabble for a living in smog-choked megacities... But for a bit of historical luck, Far Country might be Britain. America, or anywhere else." —The New York Times Book Review

John Marks
Veteran journalist and former 60 Minutes producer, John Marks, read from and discussed, Reasons to Believe: One Man's Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind, an intimate portrait of one of the most influential forces in America today. Born again at age sixteen, John Marks later abandoned his faith. In Reasons to Believe he attempts to cross a deep cultural barrier to understand those who now condemn his way of life. He grapples with the message that millions of evangelicals attempt to deliver to their fellow citizens every day and speaks at length with missionaries, political activists, theologians, Christian musicians, and filmmakers.
"A work of courageous investigative journalism as well as a memoir of startling self-reflection—Marks writes with unfailing intelligence, insight, and deep compassion about evangelical Christianity." —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Kenny Fries
Kenny Fries, noted poet, critic, and essayist, is the author of Body Remember, a moving and memorable memoir of what it is like to live with a body you are told is less than perfect. Fries was born with incompletely formed legs, a congenital birth defect that had no scientific name but entailed multiple surgeries just to partially correct the disorder. His new book, The History of My Shoes And The Evolution of Darwin's Theory. Alternating between accounts of Charles Darwin's and Alfred Russel Wallace's investigations of adaptation and variation and his own challenging odyssey as a disabled man, the author offers us a unique take on the idea of ‘survival of the fittest.’ Not only a riveting and colorful account of Darwin's and Wallace's journeys and discoveries but a story of personal evolution and the capacity for change under duress, this is an unforgettable and inspiring book."— L. Paus, Eliott Bay Book Company Book Notes

Askold Melnyczuk
Ukrainian-American novelist and founding editor of the Agni Review, Askold Melnyczuk, read from his latest novel House of Widows. A bitter historian in Vienna, traumatized by his father’s death sixteen years ago, is called out to from the past by a few mysterious objects that had belonged to his father, which lead him on a quest ending in Ukraine. An emotional and thoughtful novel about our inability to escape our histories. Melnyczuk’s first novel, What is Told, was a New York Times Notable Book, and his second, Ambassador of the Dead, was Los Angeles Times Book of the Year.

Patrick McGrath
English gothic novelist Patrick McGrath read from his new novel, Trauma, the haunting story of a psychiatrist from a deeply dysfunctional family falling into darkness and isolation in middle age.
McGrath, known for his undependable narrators with dark secrets in their pasts will disappoint none of his fans with Trauma. His best-known book is Spider for which he scripted the film starring Ralph Fiennes as the deeply disturbed title character. "Trauma reminds you of how satisfying it is to be unable to put a book down and then when it's over to be sorry and relieved to enter your comparatively unhaunted life." —Francine Prose

Dwight Hoover
Dwight Hoover, emeritus professor of history at Ball State University, read from A Good Day's Work: An Iowa Farm in the Great Depression. This unvarnished memoir of life on an Iowa farm in the midst of the depression is a fascinating account of farm life in transition. It is a detailed description of what it was like to be a boy with adult responsibilities in a difficult time. "The most detailed and artful telling of the experience of family farming that I have read" —Richard Quinney, author of Of Time and Place and Tales From the Middle Border

Eugene Drucker
Eugene Drucker plays first violin for the Emerson String Quartet, but he is also the author of The Savior, a powerful novel set at the end of World War II. Young violinist Gottfried Keller is charged with the task of playing for prisoners in a camp. "Eugene Drucker's description of music illuminates the text in a way that a non-musical writer would be incapable of." —Kate Atkinson This program includes Drucker playing Bach's Chaconne, which is the music that is portrayed in the book.

Loreen Herwaldt
Loreen Herwaldt, who holds joint appointments in the Departments of Internal Medicine and Epidemiology at The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, read from her groundbreaking guide to validating the feelings of the ill, Patient Listening: A Doctor's Guide. She was joined by five of her student doctors in a reader's threatre of selections from the illness stories of two dozen writer-patients to show health care providers how to gain the most from their interactions with patients. Oliver Sacks, Jane Smiley, Steve Kuusisto and Mary Swander are among the writers included in the volume.

Laura Flynn
Laura Flynn read from Swallow the Ocean, her beautifully written memoir of growing up with a schizophrenic mother. Flynn, who teaches writing at The University of Minnesota, does a remarkable job of describing what it's like for a child to experience a parent's mental illness. "Laura Flynn has given us an indispensable memoir, luminous and strangely heartening, a work of consummate grace and hard-won bouyancy. It's a triumph of spirit and a mesmerizing read." —Patricia Hampl, author of The Florist's Daughter.

Karen Joy Fowler
Karen Joy Fowler, author of the best-selling Jane Austen Book Club, read from and discussed her new novel, Wit's End. Fowler is one of our wittiest and most imaginative writers of fiction, and her new novel features an eccentric writer of crime fiction who builds an elaborate dollhouse diorama for each of her murder scenes, and has an intense fan base, which causes her and her far-flung family all manner of trouble.

Joshua Ferris
Iowa Writer's Workshop graduate Joshua Ferris read from his first novel, Then We Came to the End. In 2007, the book was a finalist for a National Book Award and named by The New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of the Year. Then We Came to the End tells the story of an ad agency in decline, circa 2001. "We had a toy client, a car client, a long-distance carrier and a pet store," readers are told. Ferris uses the first person plural to present the agency's collective voice in the midst of ongoing layoffs. It's an audacious narrative gimmick that could easily collapse and yet never does." —Powell's

Thomas Cahill
Thomas Cahill is an American scholar and writer best known for The Hinges of History series, a prospective seven-volume series recounting formative moments in Western civilization. To date, the series includes: How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, Desire of the Everlasting Hills:The World Before and After Jesus, Sailing the Wine Dark Seas: Why the Greeks Matter, Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe. He was on the paperback book tour of his latest book, Mysteries of the Middle Ages.

Chip Kidd
Chip Kidd read from his new novel, The Learners. He is also the author The Cheese Monkeys—a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and is a book jacket designer credited for revolutionizing the way modern book are packaged. He has written about graphic design and popular culture for McSweeney's , Vogue and The New York Times. USA Today has called him "the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design." He is also a musician and his this program we hear samples of from his band called, "Artbreak."
The Learners "is a roguish satire of 1960's advertising gone mad and is delightfully shrewd, droll and urbane... A must read for the ambitious, creative or chemically unbalanced." —Augusten Burroughs

Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman is one of our finest mystery writers. As the creator of the Tess Monaghan series, all set in her hometown Baltimore, Lippman serves up plot, character, action, sex and history in 12 (and counting) mysteries. Her latest in the series is, Another Thing to Fall. “She is among that select group of novelists who have invigorated the crime fiction arena with smart, innovative and exciting work.” —George Pelecanos

David Shields
The process of aging is the central conceit of David Shields’ new book, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead. Part memoir, part academic text, Shields traces the arc of the human body and mind in three main aspects: biological, philosophical (musings on aging from Tolstoy to Tarantino), and personal (his dad is ninety-five and more virile than he is). Triangular in construction, the book casts ideas and stories out to both daughter and father and then reels it all back in.
He is also the author of Dead Languages, Handbook for Drowning, Remote and Black Planet and Heroes: A Novel.

LeAnne Howe
LeAnne Howe read from and talked with us about her novel, Miko Kings:An Indian Baseball Story. The story is set in Indian Territory’s Ada, Oklahoma during the baseball fever of 1907, but moves back and forth from 1969, during the Vietnam War, to the present. The story focuses on an Indian baseball team but offers a new understanding of the term “America’s favorite pastime.” For tribes in Indian Territory, baseball was an extension of a sport they’d been playing for centuries before their forced removal to Indian Territory.

Kevin Brockmeier
Kevin Brockmeier, winner of O’Henry, Calvino, Nelson Algren, James Michener and NEA awards, read from his new collection of 13 stories The View From The Seventh Layer. “Brockmeier is one of my very favorite writers. What amazes me most about him isn’t his daunting technical chops or his Millhauser-sized imagination, but that in his finest moments he combines these strengths with a deeper sense of the joys and sorrows of life. These stories are wise and touching, not merely full of delightful surprises but full of heart.” —Stewart O’Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster

Rebecca Ryan
Rebecca Ryan discussed her book, Live First, Work Second. Ryan's company, Next Generation Consulting, advises governmental entities and businesses on how to attract and retain young talent. The book is based on research which iincludes 25,000 interviews with 20-40 year-olds on how to bridge generational differences to the make the workplace more effective. Economist and author Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class) says in his forward to the book that Ryan's is a "clear and incredibly grounded and intelligent voice in our dialogues about creativity, innovation and community development."

Adam Langer
Novelist Adam Langer, author of California Avenue, a romp through ‘70s Chicago, moves his sharp satirical eye, and his manic Marx Brothers pacing to New York City’s Upper West Side with Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A Flat. The real estate business is his big fish, but he fries just about every variety of little fish in New York along the way.
“Adam Langer, who is either a genius or a schizophrenic, inhabits his characters—from a pregnant woman to a pigeon—with brilliant stealth and lovable insouciance.” —Jennifer Belle

Richard Price
Novelist Richard Price, author of Clockers and Freedomland, read from his new novel, Lush Life. Price, always a compassionate listener, may be our finest writer of dialogue. His characters bristle with vitality. Lush Life is New York City, top to bottom, as it screeches into the 21st Century. “Wry, profane, hilarious, and tragic, sometimes in a single line, Lush Life is a masterwork. I doubt anyone will write a novel this good for a long, long time. —Dennis Lehane

Aryn Kyle
Novelist Aryn Kyle read from her first novel, The God of Animals, the story of a twelve-year-old girl forced to be responsible for keeping her beleaguered family and their Colorado ranch together in hard times.
"No novel in recent memory has captured the West so well. Kyle is an absolute discovery, her book is a perfect novel." —Andrew Sean Greer

Charles Baxter
Charles Baxter, one of our finest writers of fiction, read from his latest novel, The Soul Thief. The story is at once lyrical and spooky, acutely observant in its sensual and emotional detail, and audaciously unsettling in its vision. It gives a whole new meaning to identity theft! Charles Baxter is also the author of the books, The Feast of Love, Saul and Patsy, and Shadow Play.

Alan Drew
Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Alan Drew read from his first novel, Garden of Water. It is set in Turkey and based on a complex relationship between the families of American ex-patriot teachers and an impoverished Kurdish family holding on to ritual and tradition. Drew has lived in Turkey and has a fine ear for character and cultural difference. A beautifully imagined novel written in stirring prose.

Doug Thorpe
Naturalist and non-fiction writer Doug Thorpe read from his new book, Rapture of the Deep, winner of the David Family Environmental Book Award. It explores the relationship between our minds and the great world outside us—"the wild truth"—as Thorpe calls it. “Thorpe helps us understand what Thoreau meant when he said that in wilderness is the preservation of the world.” —Bill McKibben

Sheryl St. Germain and Paul Brooke
Sheryl St. Germain read from her latest collection, Let It Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems. Born in New Orleans, St.Germain is currently the Director of Poetry and Non-fiction Writing at Chatham College in Pittsburgh. She was joined by Paul Brooke who read selections from his collection, Light and Matter: Photographs and Poems of Iowa.

Andrea Hollander Budy
Prize-winning poet Andrea Hollander Budy will read from her most recent collection of poems, Woman in the Painting. She has published three collections of poems including House Without a Dreamer which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Since 1991 she has worked as Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College. "Budy's impeccable conversational diction does just what a poem should do; it raises the hairs on the nape of your neck." —Maxine Kumin

Darwin Day with evolutionary biologist
Massimo Pigliucci
In an event co-sponsored the University of Iowa Department of Biological Sciences to celebrate Darwin Day in Iowa City featuring renowned evolutionary biologist, philosopher, and professor at SUNY Stonybrook, Dr Massimo Pigliucci. His book Denying Evolution has been praised for its clear and wise advocacy of the Darwinian view of life.

Robert Hellenga
Robert Hellenga, novelist and professor at Knox College, will read from his new novel, The Italian Lover. A story of love and death and memory and desire—the ways lives are launched, enjoyed, endured, and made meaningful. Hellenga is the author of the national bestsellers, The Fall of the Sparrow, and The Sixteen Pleasures.

Natalie Goldberg
Renowned writing teacher, Natalie Goldberg, author of the ground-breaking Writing Down the Bones read from her new book, Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice Of Writing Memoir. This useful and inspiring new book is based on the idea that in order to write a memoir we must first know how to remember. Through timed, associative and meditative exercises Old Friend From Far Away guides us to do just that.

Mary Relindes Ellis
Mary Relindes Ellis, read from her riveting new novel, The Turtle Warrior. Domestic violence, war, and the search for self identity weave through a story of two rural Wisconsin families; both of them unwittingly have the ability to save one another.
"A strong, bold novel that cuts a hard bargain between violence and forgiveness. "Ellis writes about a family you’d never want to be a part of, but it is one you will never forget. An astonishing and eloquent debut by a writer you’ll hear from again.” —author Pat Conroy

Abigail Foerstner
Internationally renowned Iowa native space scientist James Van Allen is the subject of a new biography by Northwestern University Professor Abigail Foerstner. Foerstner visited the program to discuss her book, James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles. Born and raised in Mt. Pleasant, Van Allen was among the principle scientific investigators for 24 space missions, including Explorer1 (1958), Mariner 2 (1962) and Pioneer 10 and 11 (1970s). He was the lead discoverer, and namesake of the Van Allen radiation belts.

Tim Fay and the Wapsipinicon Almanac
Tim Fay, publisher, editor and printer of Iowa’s award-winning Wapsipinicon Almanac was joined by a number of contributors to the latest edition of the journal for a lively evening of entertainment.
This is literature rooted in rich Iowa soil; intelligent, witty and printed on an antique press.

Michael Pollan
The author of The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma Michael Pollan discusses his latest book, In Defense of Food. The book shows us how, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Michael Pollan website.

This program was co-sponsored by the New