University of Iowa Writers' Workshop graduates Vinnie Wilhelm and Nick Dybek will read from their work at 7 p.m., Wednesday, April 18, in Prairie Lights Books and on a live stream at the Writing University Website, www.writinguniversity.org.

Wilhelm will read from his first collection of stories, In The Absence of Predators, and Dybek will read from his novel When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man.

Wilhelm is the recipient of literary fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the National Endowment for the Arts. His fiction has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Harvard Review, the Southern Review, and elsewhere.

Dybek's novel is set on Loyalty Island where every fall the men sail from the Olympic Peninsula up to the Bering Sea to spend the winter catching king crab. Their dangerous occupation keeps food on the table but constantly threatens to leave empty seats around it.

Stewart O'Nan commented, "Robert Louis Stevenson would be proud of Nick Dybek. He delivers a page-turner full of danger, secrets, and betrayals."

Dybek is the recipient of a Hopwood Award for short fiction, a Maytag Fellowship, and a 2010 James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award.

For additional information or accommodations, contact jan@prairielights.com.