Writers’ Workshop graduate Alexander Maksik will read from his new novel, A Marker to Measure Drift, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25, 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.

The novel tracks a woman's journey from the horrors of Charles Taylor's Liberia to abject poverty and self-exile on a Greek island, where she must grapple with a haunted past and find a way back into human society.

Award-winning fiction writer Ben Fountain says of Maksik’s new novel, “A Marker to Measure Drift is a haunting, haunted novel. Things get stripped down to essentials—food, water, where to sleep for the night, a state of solitary desperation brought on by the most profound kind of loss. Every line of this excellent novel rings true.”

Maksik is the author of You Deserve Nothing, and his writing has appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading, Harper’s, Tin House, Harvard Review, the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Salon, and Narrative Magazine.

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 attend this reading, call Jan Weissmiller at Prairie Lights in advance, 319-337-2681.

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