Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumnus John Smolens will read from his new book, Quarantine, at 7 p.m., Friday, Nov. 9, 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.

Smolens, on faculty at Northern Michigan University, has published six novels (in addition to Quarantine, he wrote Cold, The Invisible World, Fire Point, Angel’s Head, and Winter by Degrees), and one collection of short stories (My One and Only Bomb Shelter). Cold was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the Detroit Free Press selected Fire Point as the best book by a Michigan author in 2004. His short stories and essays have appeared in various magazines and newspapers, including the Virginia Quarterly, the William and Mary Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe.

He holds degrees from Boston College, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of Iowa. In 2006 he was the recipient of a Distinguished Faculty Award from Northern Michigan University.

The story of Quarantine: The year is 1796, and a trading ship arrives in the vibrant trading town of Newburyport, Mass. But it's a ghost ship—her entire crew has been stricken by a virulent fever that sweeps through the harbor town, and Newburyport's residents start to fall ill and die with alarming haste. When physician Giles Wiggins places the port under quarantine, he earns the ire of his shipbuilder half-brother, the wealthy and powerful Enoch Sumner, and their eccentric mother, Miranda. Defiantly, Giles sets up a pest house, where the afflicted might be cared for and separated from the rest of the populace in an attempt to contain the epidemic.

As the seaport descends into panic, religious fervor, and mob rule, bizarre occurrences ensue. As the epidemic grows, fear, greed, and unhinged obsession threaten the Sumner family—and the future of Newburyport itself.

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

For more information or special accommodations to attend this reading, call Jan Weissmiller at Prairie Lights, 319-337-2681. For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the new Arts Iowa website.