Beginning on April 21st, The University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine will host a three-day conference focusing on the links between the science of medicine and the art of writing. In conjunction with the conference, Prairie Lights will host a reading with some of the participants. Readers will include Paul Austin reading from Something for the Pain: CompassIon and Burnout in the ER — a riveting memoir, an ER doctor recalls how the daily grind of long, erratic shifts and endless hordes of patients sent him down a path of bitterness and cynicism, Yuko Taniguchi reading from The Ocean in the Closet — a beautiful and poignant novel that examines the devastating consequences of war on a family divided by history and geography, and George Estreich reading from The Shape of the Eye: Down Syndrome, Family, and the Stories We Inherit — a powerful memoir by a poet and stay-at-home dad who powerfully tells his daughter's story.