Gary Shteyngart, a guest of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, will present a free reading at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 12, in the Frank Conroy Reading Room of the Dey House.

Shteyngart, who teaches at Columbia University and Princeton University, was born in Russia and emigrated to the United States in 1979.

His work has received numerous awards. The Russian Debutante's Handbook won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction, the Book-of-the-Month Club First Fiction Award, and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, and it was named a New York Times Notable Book and one of the best debuts of the year by The Guardian.

Absurdistan was chosen as one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review as well as a book of the year by many other publications.

In 2010, Shteyngart was included in The New Yorker's "20 under 40" fiction writers, and Super Sad True Love Story won the 2010 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic literature.

The UI Writers' Workshop is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

For more information or special accommodations to attend this reading, contact Connie Brothers at 319-335-0419 or connie-brothers@uiowa.edu.