University of Iowa English faculty member Kevin Kopelson will read from his new book, Confessions of a Plagiarist: And Other Tales from School, at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 17, in a free event at Prairie Lights Books and on a Virtual Writing University live stream.

Kopelson created a stir in 2008 when he wrote a piece for the London Review of Books, chronicling a long series of unattributed, whole-cloth borrowings that began in fourth grade. The new book begins with that piece and then relates his entire life to his work as an academic.

He explains, "Were one to pitch this book to Hollywood, he might well say: 'Think Allegories of Reading (by Paul de Man) meets Barrel Fever (by David Sedaris). Or think Lying: A Metaphysical Memoir (by Lauren Slater) meets Lolita.'"

Kathrin Day Lassila, the editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine, wrote, "This is as painful and thoughtful as a great confessional essay can be, but it also has a quality I haven't seen before: a clenched-jaw bravado, as if Kopelson were performing surgery on himself. It leaves the reader squirming but fascinated."

Kopelson majored in music at Yale and then got a law degree from Columbia. After practicing law, he got a doctorate in English Literature from Brown before coming to the UI. He has taught critical theory at the UI since 1992, and his books include Love’s Litany, Beethoven’s Kiss, The Queer Afterlife of Vaslav Nijinsky, Neatness Counts, and Sedaris.

The English Department is a unit of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. For accommodations at the live event, contact jan@prairielights.com. To access a UI arts calendar with details of upcoming events, visit the new Arts Iowa website.