In this special event, two recent graduates of The University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop will read from their new books. 

Anna Noyes will read from Goodnight, Beautiful Women. Charles Baxter calls this collection of stories set in coastal Maine “extraordinary, mysterious and beautifully written  — tales that will stay in your memory long after you finish the book.”  Anna Noyes’ fiction has appeared in Vice, A Public Space, and Guernica. She has received the Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellowship, and has served as writer-in-residence at the Polli Talu Arts Center in Estonia. Goodnight, Beautiful Women received the Henfield Prize for Fiction.

Brian Booker will read from his short story collection, Are You Here for What I’m Here For?  The suspense creeps in and takes hold in these seven stories about troubled characters grappling with rare illnesses, menacing chance encounters, sexual awakening, impending natural disasters, and New Age cults. Even at its most surreal, this polished and lyrical debut remains grounded in the emotional lives of people teetering atop widening chasms of confusion and doubt.

Brian Booker’s stories have been published in the New England Review, Conjunctions, One Story, Tin House, and VICE. In addition to an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he holds a PhD in English from New York University, and has been a fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago.