Actor, director and writer Bruce Campbell has crafted a career out of a certain kind of off-beat character. As an actor, he doesn’t disappear into a role, but rather imbues each with an almost ludicrous uniqueness, a deeply specific sense of self. This kind of interplay between the fantasy and reality of his existence is a perfect precursor to his alternate career as a memoirist.
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Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe, the recently published book by University of Iowa Assistant Professor Inara Verzemnieks, explores her family’s diverging journeys as war descended on their Latvian home — resulting in trauma and loss that would reverberate through the generations. […]
Vermont senator and former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is coming to Iowa City. Prairie Lights is hosting his appearance at Hancher Auditorium on Thursday night, August 31. Tickets will be available through the Hancher box office starting on July 14 at 10 a.m. […]
Author and activist Taylor Brorby is a longtime voice for progressive environmentalism. Hailing originally from North Dakota, he brings a passionate love of the earth to his writing. Last year, as co-editor of the anthology Fracture, he spoke to Little Village about the value of creating new perspectives — in his more recent work, he does just that. […]
Arthur Russell Week various venues — Tuesday, April 25 through Friday, April 28 When Arthur Russell was a teenager, he ran away from his home in Oskaloosa, Iowa. A pioneer in cross-genre composition during the 1970s and ’80s, Russell released just one solo album during his lifetime: World of Echo in 1986. He collaborated with […]
LA-based writer Stephanie Danler’s recently-released ‘Sweetbitter’ spins the tale of a young twenty-something looking to find her way in the world after graduation. The story is told through the lens of front-of-house restaurant work, a job that proves to be both Exhilarating and exhausting for the novel’s heroine, Tess, and one that Danler experienced first-hand in her formative early twenties. […]
Several years ago — or, in storybook parlance, Once Upon a Time — a long-lost creek in northeast Iowa came back to life. It did so with the help of Mike Osterholm, who acted on a hint and a hunch to add the nearly-forgotten waterway into his efforts to return an old cornfield to the […]
Rae Meadows and Dean Bakopoulos Prairie Lights Bookstore — Wednesday, Sept. 7 at 7 p.m. With deft and lyrical prose, Rae Meadows weaves a tale of love, hope and survival in her recent novel, I Will Send Rain (Henry Holt & Co.), published Aug. 9. Meadows will read from the book Wednesday, Sept. 7 at […]
Juxtapositions photo slide show and talk Prairie Lights Bookstore — Tuesday, June 21 at 7 p.m. There is a pair of eye-catching photos near the center of a new book celebrating the work of renowned photographer Ted Polumbaum. On the left is a stark black & white photo of a visibly distressed African-American child standing […]
Garth Greenwell’s debut novel, What Belongs to You, begins when an American high school teacher meets a young prostitute named Mitko in the bathroom basement of Bulgaria’s National Palace of Culture. The book that unspools their relationship is already poised to be one of the best of the year. It takes us through Sofia, Kentucky and a complex web of memory that makes us consider the ways all of our relationships are shaped by need and longing, both emotional and material. That longing is woven into our narrator’s very fiber and the complex country that surrounds him and the charismatic, complicated Mitko. […]
Mention Naomi Jackson’s name to anyone who’s been on the local literary scene for a few years and you’ll elicit an excited, “Oh!” Readings she did while… […]
Alisa Ganieva’s career as a fiction writer began in 2009 when her story, “Salam, Dalgat!” won Russia’s Debut Literary Prize. Written under a male pseudonym… […]
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