Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumni Lauren Shapiro and Kevin González will read from their work at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 2, 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.

Shapiro, who will read from Easy Math, received a Bachelor of Arts in comparative literature from Brown University and an Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is a former associate acquiring editor at the Yale University Press and has translated poetry from Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese, and Arabic into English. Her poems have been published in such journals as Pool, Passages North, 32 Poems, Forklift, Ohio, Drunken Boat, notnostrums, and Thermos. She is a curator of the Monsters of Poetry Reading Series and an assistant editor at Rescue Press. Easy Math was selected by Marie Howe for the 2011 Kathryn A. Morton Prize.

González was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His first book of poems, Cultural Studies, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2009 and was a finalist for the 2010 Paterson Poetry Prize. His fiction has been awarded the Narrative Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Award, the Playboy Fiction Prize, and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. His stories have appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading, Best New American Voices, and Keeping the Wolves at Bay: Stories by Emerging American Writers. He serves as editor of jubilat. He is on faculty at Trinity College.

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

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all UI events. If you require an accommodation to attend this reading, call Jan Weissmiller at Prairie Lights in advance at 319-337-2681.

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