Readings Archive

Iowa City native Tim Johnston returns to Prairie Lights to read from Irish Girl, winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. Tim Johnston received an MFA from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and then worked as a carpenter. His first book, Never So Green, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The tightly coiled stories in Irish Girl venture deeply into the consciousness of Midwesterners to unearth old tensions and buried animosities. “It’s dark in here, but brilliant. Tim Johnston is as wise as he is original, and his stories are impossible to forget.”–David Sedaris
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Writers’ Workshop graduate Jerald Walker reads from Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption. Masterfully told, marked by irony and humor as well as outrage and a barely contained sadness, Jerald Walker’s Street Shadows is the story of a young man’s descent into the “thug life” and the wake-up call that led to his finding himself again. Walker was born in a Chicago housing project and raised, along with his six brothers and sisters, by blind parents of modest means but middle-class aspirations. A boy of great promise whose parents and teachers saw success in his future, he seemed destined to fulfill their hopes. But by age fourteen, like so many of his friends, he found himself drawn to the streets, his life spiraling toward the violent and premature end all too familiar to African American males. “This is a must read for everyone who cares about the questions and the quest that being a human requires.”–Nikki Giovanni. “Walker never fails to be honest where truth is needed and he never fails to be gracious where generosity is possible.”–Marilynne Robinson
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Nicholas Pace, Professor of Education at the University of Northern Iowa, will read from and discuss The  Principal’s Challenge: Learning from Gay and Lesbian Students. Presented in eight unique stories in the students’ own words, the book reveals an unexpected yet vital lesson for educators, policy makers, and all those concerned with meeting students’ needs.
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University of Iowa professor of Creative writing, John D’Agata, reads from his book About a Mountain. While moving his mother to Las Vegas, D’Agata began to follow the story of the government’s plan to store high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Exploring intertwined questions of time, communication, and annihilation, D’Agata’s highly-anticipated second book is an unflinching, terrifying, and beautifully written meditation on nothing less than the future of human life. Book signing to follow at Prairie Lights.
Listen to an audio recording of this reading here