Tom Lin will read from his new novel, Babylon, South Dakota, and will be joined in conversation with University of Iowa visiting assistant professor Thomas Mira y Lopez. Described as "a tantalizing, American West saga about a Chinese American family trying to survive on their Dakota farm as a powerful, mysterious, and morally dubious military secret shapes their lives," Babylon, South Dakota is praised by bestselling author and University of Iowa colleague Kaveh Akbar as a "wildly ambitious, deeply strange world with its own ecology and physics and sociology that is also, importantly, our world in all times past, present, and future," while fellow U of Iowa colleague and bestselling poet and author Paige Lewis says: "Tom Lin has written a flawless novel that belongs in a category all its own. The prose is so precise, so vivid, that even everyday objects seem fantastical, invented just for this world. I’ll never be able to look at stained glass, or chrysanthemums, or even binoculars without being immediately transported back to Babylon, South Dakota."

Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he also holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis. His first novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. He teaches English and creative writing at the University of Iowa.

Thomas Mira y Lopez is the author of The Book of Resting Places (Counterpoint Press, 2017). He holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Arizona and is an editor of Territory, a literary project about maps, as well as a fiction editor at DIAGRAM. He translates from Brazilian Portuguese and is originally from New York.