Thursday, April 19, 2012

The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop will present free readings by four of its faculty members in events at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 25, and Friday, April 27, in the Frank Conroy Reading Room of the Dey House. The Wednesday reading will feature fiction writer Kevin Brockmeier and poet Jonathan Thirkield, and the Friday reading will feature poet Mark Levine and fiction writer Michelle Huneven.

Brockmeier has published seven books of fiction, most recently the novel The Illumination, which attracted starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist, and the story collection The View from the Seventh Layer. His work has recently been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, and The Scribner's Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction. He has received the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three O. Henry Awards and the Nelson Algren Award, and he was named one of Granta magazine's Best Young American Novelists.

Thirkield is the author of The Waker's Corridor, winner of the 2008 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. He was a Truman Capote Fellow in the Writers' Workshop, and his poems have appeared in Web Conjunctions, New American Writing, the Colorado Review, 1913: a journal of forms, American Letters & Commentary and other journals.

Levine is the author of three books of poems, Debt, Enola Gay, and The Wilds, and a book of nonfiction, F5. He has written journalism for many magazines including The New York Times Magazine, Outside, and The New Yorker, and his honors include a Whiting Writers Award and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Huneven is the author of three novels: Blame, Jamesland, and Round Rock. Her nonfiction writing includes restaurant reviews for The Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Weekly, and other food journalism. She has received a General Electric Foundation Award for Younger Writers and a Whiting Writers’ Award for fiction. Visit her website at www.michellehuneven.com.

For more information or special accommodations to attend, contact the workshop at 319-335-0416. The Writers’ Workshop is a unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Graduate College.