The Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program presents Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor Jordan Kisner, who will read from her essay collection Thin Places: Essays from In Between. "Great writing begins not with the voice but with the eyes. Jordan Kisner has piercing vision, and she sees herself as keenly as she observes the teeming, chaotic world around her. She has a powerful voice, too, dispassionate and rhapsodic in equal measure. What results is a woundingly relevant book about American dreams and madness in the early twenty-first century." ―Alex Ross

Jordan Kisner is the author of the essay collection Thin Places, named one of the best books of 2020 by NPR. She is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and the New York Times Magazine, and the host of the LitHub podcast Thresholds. She was a columnist for the Paris Review, and her essays have been featured in The Believer, n+1, New York Magazine, The Guardian Long-Read, Pitchfork, and others. Her work has been honored as a finalist for the National Magazine Award in feature writing, included in Best American Essays, and awarded a Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York.