Poet Jared Stanley, an alumnus of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, will present a free reading at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14, in Prairie Lights Books, and on a live stream of the Virtual Writing University website of the University of Iowa.

Stanley’s new book is The Weeds, about which Cole Swensen wrote, “What is it to live unrelentingly in an unrelenting landscape? Hot, harsh, sparse, these sharp poems conjure the quick wit and wry eye that such an environment requires.”

Stanley is also the author of Book Made of Forest, a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry,and four chapbooks, including How the Desert Did Me In. His poems have appeared in Conduit, Gutcult, Melancholias, Tremulous Dreadlocks, horse less review, and Zoland Poetry Annual #3. He co-edits Mrs. Maybe, and is a member of the art collective Unmanned Minerals.

Stanley is a 2012-2014 Research Fellow at the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art,and teaches at Sierra Nevada College. From 2004 through 2007 he was a lecturer in creative writing for the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio.

The Writers’ Workshop is a unit of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Graduate College. For accommodations at the live event, contact jan@prairielights.com.