Iowa graduate Lizzie Buehler will read from her debut novel, The Obsessed, and will be joined in conversation by Julia Conrad. Described as "A bighearted portrait of the anxieties of desire [that] explores the trials of modern dating, the strange ennui of academia, and the question of how to create a world for yourself within and without the confines of your influences," The Obsessed is praised by Forbes.com as "[A] delectable novel about obsession and dating in the modern age," while Debutiful says: "You will obsess over The Obsessed...It’s sad. It’s weird. It’s horny. You’ll yearn while reading Buehler’s brilliant writing."

Lizzie Buehler is the translator of The Disaster Tourist (winner of the CWA Dagger for crime fiction in translation), Art on Fire, and Table for One by Yun Ko-eun; and Korean Teachers by Seo Su-jin. She holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa and has studied comparative literature at Harvard and Princeton. The Obsessed is her debut novel.

Julia Conrad is an assistant professor of instruction at the University of Iowa and is a writer and Italian translator. Her work has been published in The Massachusetts Review, The Offing, Revista Nexos, Asymptote, and the anthology Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books 2020), among others, and she's a contributor to VAN Magazine and The Millions. Her first book, a hidden history of women in classical music, is forthcoming from Scribner Books. She holds two MFAs from the University of Iowa, in Nonfiction and in Literary Translation.