Live From Prairie Lights

“Live from Prairie Lights” is an internationally known readings series, which features some of the best up-and-coming and well-established authors & poets from all over the globe. Presented before a live audience and streamed over the world wide web, this long running series brings the spoken word from the bookstore to the masses.

Most readings begin @ 7:00 p.m. Arrive early to assure yourself a seat.

The Live from Prairie Lights archive is available here.

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February 7, 2012 - 7:00pm

Iowa City Public Library

Charles Dickens' 200th Birthday Celebration

In conjunction with The Obermann Center, Prairie Lights invites you to a celebration of Charles' Dickens birthday at the Iowa City Public Library on February 7th.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the famous novelist's birth. The Obermann Center has organized a number of events around this anniversary. Prairie Lights, The Iowa City Public Library, The UNESCO City of LIterature, The Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry and The UI LIbrary Special Collections will collaborate in the sponsorship of these events.

On February 7th, a mutli-disciplinary panel at the library will introduce the novel Oliver Twist. All are then invited to participate in a community reading of Oliver Twist, which will culminate in a public discussion — again at the library — on March 5th.

The panel on the 7th will include: Jeff Cox from the UI History Department discussing The Poor Law and the "welfare" system in 19th Century Britain; Miriam Gilbert from the English Department discussing stereotypes of "the Jew" that shaped the character Fagin; Becci Reedus, Executive Director of the Crisis Center of Johnson County discussing poverty and hunger in our own community; and Teresa Mangum from the Obermann Center introducing themes from the novel in preparation for the March discussion. They will be followed by Tim Budd of Prairie Lights reading "the death of Nancy" from Oliver Twist. The evening will end with birthday cake and punch.

February 9, 2012 - 7:00pm

Prairie Lights

CHINELO OKPARANTA & BEN MARCUS

Join us for a special reading which will launch both Granta Magazine's new issue: Exit Strategies and feature Ben Marcus reading from his new novel.

Chinelo Okparanta, who holds an MFA in fiction from The Iowa Writer’s Workshop, will read from her Granta story ‘America.’ In addition to Okparanta's story, Exit Strategies contains work by John Barth, Alice Munro, and Claire Messud.

Ben Marcus will read from his new novel, The Flame Alphabet, which will be published in the UK by Granta next year. It is set after a terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children's speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. Figuratively speaking, teenagers can be described as toxic, but in Marcus' speculative tale, teens are literally poisoning their parents each time they speak. This ingenious and provoking premise enables the boldly imaginative Marcus to explore the paradoxes of family and how the need to communicate can go utterly wrong.

“Ben Marcus is the rarest kind of writer: a necessary one. It’s become impossible to imagine the literary world—the world itself—without his daring, mind-bending and heartbreaking writing.” —Jonathan Safran Foer

February 14, 2012 - 7:00pm

Prairie Lights

PAUL'S BOOK CLUB

Please join us for the February edition of Paul's Book Club, led by Paul Ingram. This month Paul will host a discussion of The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor. The novel focuses on the Gault family who lead a life of privilege in early 1920s Ireland until the threat of violence leads the parents of nine-year-old Lucy to decide to leave for England, her mother's home. Lucy cannot bear the thought of leaving Lahardane, their country house with its beautiful land and nearby beach, and a dog she has befriended. On the day before they are to leave, Lucy runs away, hoping to convince her parents to stay. Instead, she sets off a series of tragic misunderstandings that affect all of Lahardane's inhabitants for the rest of their lives.

William Trevor is an Irish author and playwright. He is considered one of the elder statesmen of the Irish literary world and widely regarded as the greatest contemporary writers of short stories in the English language.

February 16, 2012 - 7:00pm

Prairie Lights

HANNAH PITTARD

Hannah Pittard will read from her novel, The Fates Will Find Their Way. This highly praised novel revolves around the fact that sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell is missing and the neighborhood boys she's left behind are caught forever in the heady current of her absence. As the days and years pile up, the mystery of her disappearance grows kaleidoscopically. A collection of rumors, divergent suspicions, and tantalizing what-ifs, Nora Lindell's story is a shadowy projection of teenage lust, friendship, reverence and regret, captured magically in the disembodied plural voice of the boys who still long for her. Far more eager to imagine Nora's fate than to scrutinize their own, the boys sleepwalk into an adulthood of jobs, marriages, families, homes, and daughters of their own, all the while pining for a girl—and a life—that no longer exists, except in the imagination.

"A dreamlike cross between The Virgin Suicides and The Lovely Bones." —Time magazine

Hannah Pittard's fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, The Oxford American, The Mississippi Review and StoryQuarterly, and was included in 2008 Best American Short Stories. She is the recipient of 2006 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, and is a graduate of the University of Virginia's MFA program.She currently teaches fiction at DePaul University.

February 21, 2012 - 7:00pm

Prairie Lights

GLENN FREEMAN

Glenn Freeman will read from his new book of poetry, Traveling Light. "Through the fertile valley of his poems wanders an iconoclastic American Self beset by Post-Romantic anxiety and wonder. Whether atheist or Buddhist, rock-'n-roller or lyrical provocateur, Freeman has it going on, as he spins 'beneath the All Of It.' We're the better for this terrific book." – Michael Alan Parker

Glenn Freeman grew up in Maryland and has since lived in Vermont, Minnesota, and Florida. He now lives with his wife and two cats in Iowa where he teaches creative writing at Cornell College. He has degrees from Goddard College, Vermont College, and the University of Florida. He has received grants from the Minnesota Arts Board, the Loft-McKnight Foundation, and the Iowa Arts Council, as well as fellowships from The Blacklock Nature Sanctuary and the Vermont Studio Center. He has served as Artist-in-Residence at Isle Royale National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. His first book of poems, Keeping the Tigers Behind Us was the winner of the judge's prize in the Sixth Annual Elixir Press Poetry Awards.

February 22, 2012 - 7:00pm

Prairie Lights

JOHN D'AGATA

John D'Agata will read from his new book, The Lifespan of a Fact, which focuses on the question of how negotiable a fact in nonfiction actually is. In 2003, an essay by John D’ Agata was rejected by the magazine that commissioned it due to factual inaccuracies. That essay which eventually became the foundation of D’Agata’s critically acclaimed About a Mountain was accepted by another magazine, The Believer, but not before they handed it to their own fact-checker, Jim Fingal. What resulted from that assignment was seven years of arguments, negotiations, and revisions as D’Agata and Fingal struggled to navigate the boundaries of literary nonfiction.

This book reproduces D’Agata’s essay, along with D’Agata and Fingal’s extensive correspondence. What emerges is a brilliant and eye-opening meditation on the relationship between truth and accuracy and a penetrating conversation about whether it is appropriate for a writer to substitute one for the other.

“John D’Agata is a sublime technician of language and a writer of the gravest moral concerns.” – Ben Marcus

John D'Agata holds an MFA in Poetry from The Iowa Writers' Workshop and is also a graduate of the UI Nonfiction Writing Program. His books include About a Mountain, Halls of Fame, Lost Origins of the Essay, and The Next American Essay. He lives in Iowa City and teaches in The Nonfiction Writing Program.

February 23, 2012 - 7:00pm

Prairie Lights

ROBERT LELEUX

Robert Leleux will read from The Living End: A Memoir of Forgetting and Forgiving. Leleux's first book, the gutsy, blackly funny Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy starred his over-the-top mom. This new memoir focuses on Leleux's grandmother, JoAnn, estranged from her daughter and slowly caving in to Alzheimer's. The Living End is a tribute to an unforgettable woman, and a testimony to the way a disease can awaken an urgent desire for love and forgiveness. Told with sparkling wit and warmth, The Living End will resonate with families coping with Alzheimer's.

Robert Leleux's grandmother JoAnn was a steel magnolia, an elegant and devastatingly witty woman: quick-tongued, generous in her affections, but sometimes oddly indifferent to the emotions of those who most needed her. When JoAnn began exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's, she'd been estranged from her daughter, Robert's mother Jessica, for decades. As her disease progressed, JoAnn lost most of her memories, but she also forgot her old wounds and anger. She became a happy, gentler person who was finally able to reach out to her daughter in what became a strangely life-affirming experience, an unexpected blessing that gave a divided family a second chance. "This book is at times hilarious, tender, and heartbreaking—further proof that Mr. Leleux is ripening into one of the best prose stylists in America." —Pat Conroy

Robert Leleux teaches creative writing in the New York city schools. His nonfiction pieces have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Texas Observer, and elsewhere. He lives with his husband, Michael Leleux, in Manhattan.

February 24, 2012 - 7:00pm

Prairie Lights

JENNIFER WILSON

Jennifer Wilson will read from her memoir, Running Away to Home. Jennifer Wilson and her husband Jim had always dreamed of taking a family sabbatical in another country, so when they lost half their savings in the stock-market crash, it seemed like just a crazy enough time to do it. The family packed up and left the troubled landscape of contemporary America for the land of Jennifer's ancestors: the Croatian mountain village of Mrkopalj. For several months, the Wilson family lived like locals: trying the local food, milking the neighbor's cows, and braving the village recipe for bootleg liquor. As the family struggled to stay sane and discover their roots, what they found was much deeper and bigger than themselves.

“I like the heart and good humor of Jennifer Wilson: she has given us a book about the ways sense of place is heightened by displacement and the most enlightening scraps of history must be coaxed from the darkest corners.” —Michael Perry, author of Population: 485

Running Away to Home is Eat, Pray, Love meets Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, in a Croatian setting. Travel-lovers, foodies, genealogists, and anyone searching for meaning will enjoy this funny and touching family adventure. Jennifer Wilson has written for National Geographic Traveler, Gourmet, Esquire, Midwest Living, Better Homes & Gardens, Frommer’s Budget Traveler, Parents, and Disney Family Fun. She lives in Des Moines.

February 25, 2012 - 5:00pm

Prairie Lights

COLLEEN BRADFORD KRANTZ