University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumnus Andrew Malan Milward will read from his prize-winning collection of short stories, The Agriculture Hall of Fame, at 7 p.m. Monday, June 25, in Prairie Lights Books. The free reading will be streamed live on the Writing University website.

Andrew Milward

Milward set these stories in his home state of Kansas, where he explores the less visible aspects of the Midwest experience, where its agrarian past comes into conflict with the harsh present reality of drugs, fundamentalism, and corporatism, relegating its agrarian identity to museums and amusement parks.

The Agriculture Hall of Fame won the prestigious Juniper Award from the University of Massachusetts Press.

Lauren Groff, author of Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories and Arcadia, wrote, “Andrew Malan Milward is a subtle writer with an unsparing eye and a heart as vast as a prairie. The 10 stories in his first book, The Agriculture Hall of Fame, are graceful evocations of loss of fathers and first loves, of lakes and sisters, of the rusting Midwestern heartland one sees from a bus window as it pulls away. An evocative debut from a writer to cheer for.”

Milward’s stories have appeared in Zoetrope, the Southern Review, Columbia, Conjuctions, Failbetter, and Best New American Voices 2010. He has served as a McCreight Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University, a writing fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a resident artist at the Santa Fe Art Institute.

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