Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate Marian Clark will read from her memoir, Sixty-Something and Flying Solo: A Retiree Sorts it Out in Iowa, at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.

When Clark retired after 24 years as a UI academic advisor, she hit a major crossroads: How does a childless, partner-less aging Oregon transplant find home and purpose without the community of colleagues and students who’ve kept her sane? It was that question and the subsequent year of trials and errors that spawned Sixty-Something and Flying Solo.

Novelist Bart Yates says of the memoir, “The essays in Marian Clark’s Sixty-Something and Flying Solo are alternately charming, sweet, sad, funny, and wise. Clark is a sly writer; she lured me in with simple anecdotes about broken garbage disposals and mysteriously disappearing walls; only later did I realize she was really writing about mortality, loss, joy, and love. Great stuff.”

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop is a graduate program in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all UI-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this reading,call Jan Weissmiller at Prairie Lights in advance at 319-337-2681.

For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the Arts Iowa website.