Writing University website will stream March 19-22 readings

The University of Iowa’s Writing University website— www.writinguniversity.org—will carry live streams of readings by three UI-connected writers: Stephen Beachy on Monday, March 19; Honor Moore on Wednesday, March 21; and Kevin Moffett on Thursday, March 22. The streams will originate in free, public events at 7 p.m. in Prairie Lights Books, 15 S. Dubuque St. in downtown Iowa City.

Stephen Beachy

Beachy, an alumnus of the UI Writer’s Workshop, will read from his new novel, Boneyard; Moore, a visiting faculty member in the UI Nonfiction Writing Program, will read from her memoir, The Bishop’s Daughter; and Moffett, a UI alumnus and former winner of the UI Press John Simmons Short Fiction Award for Permanent Visitors, will read from his new collection, Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events.

Beachy comes from Mennonite and Old Order Amish heritage, and his new novel is the story of Jake Yoder, a mysterious and disturbed Amish boy. Beachy frames Jake’s stories with commentary from both himself and his editor, in which they offer their very different views on Amish culture and other issues.

Beachy, who teaches at the University of San Francisco, is also the author of Whistling Song, Distortion and Some Phantom/No Time Flat.

Rebecca Brown called the book, “Intelligent cultural critique wrapped in a twisty, turny, funny, damning fairy tale that happened neither long ago nor far away but every day and here.”

Honor Moore

Moore, the UI Bedell Visiting Distinguished Writer, began her career as a poet and theater artist, before writing the nonfiction books The Bishop’s Daughter: A Memoir, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award,and The White Blackbird: A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter.

In The Bishop’s Daughter, Moore reflects on the life of Paul Moore, the liberal activist Episcopal bishop of New York, and the untold secret that troubled his life.

Chris Adrian wrote of Moffett’s book, “These stories are as enormously funny as they are enormously sad. Moffett deals in wisdom, humor, and sympathy with extraordinary fluency; the results are always as unsettling as they are reassuring. And this seems to me about as close as you can come to writing the truth about life.”

Kevin Moffett

Moffett’s stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, American Short Fiction, and other periodicals, as well as in three editions of The Best American Short Stories. He is also the winner of the Nelson Algren Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2010 National Magazine Award for the title story.

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Nonfiction Writing Program are parts of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the UI Graduate College.