Poet and neurologist Dawn McGuire will read from her new collection, The Aphasia Café, at 7 p.m. Friday, June 22, at Prairie Lights Books and on a live stream through the University of Iowa Writing University website.

Dawn McGuire

The poems in The Aphasia Café explore what it means to be human when the sense of self can no longer be communicated using spoken or written language.

McGuire writes for the "everyday" aphasias we all share—how we often can't say what we mean or mean what we say, our falling in the “fault lines” of language, the threats to self-identity and meaning—in poems about family, bigotry, political and sexual violence, and the counter-forces of love and redemption.

McGuire is the author of two previous poetry collections, Sleeping in Africa and Hands, and her scientific work is focused in two areas: developing biological and gene therapies for Huntington's disease, multiple sclerosis and other neurological ailments; and reducing disparities in stroke and other neurologic conditions.

Her poems have appeared in magazine and anthologies, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Journal of American Neurology.

McGuire has won several poetry awards, including the 2011 Sarah Lawrence/Campbell Corner Academy of Language Exchange Poetry Prize for "poems that treat larger themes with lyric intensity."

She is an adjunct professor of neurology at the Neurosciences Institute of Morehouse School of Medicine.

For accommodations at the live event, contact jan@prairielights.com.