Oct. 1-4 will be a busy literary week at Prairie Lights and on live streams from the University of Iowa’s Virtual Writing University website.

--Alumna Robyn Schiff, director of undergraduate writing at the UI, and recent Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumna Margaret Ross, who have new poetry chapbooks from Catenary Press, at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct 1.
--Des Moines poet, essayist and businessman James Autry, former executive of the Meredith Corporation, at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2.
--Writers’ Workshop fiction alumnus Andrew Porter at 6:45 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3.
--Wisconsin poet John Koethe at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct 4.
--Historians Alice Kessler-Harris and William Chafe at 7 p.m. Oct 4.

Schiff is the author of Revolver and Worth, both from the UI Press. Her work has been represented in several anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections, and Transatlantic Verse.

She was a featured poet at the 2007 Poetry Society of America Festival of New American Poets, and was recognized with an award from the Greenwall Fund by the Academy of American Poets in 2002. She coedits The Canary and Canarium Books.

Ross earned her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Harvard College where she was a winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Lloyd McKim Garrison Prize. At the UI she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and received the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Leidner Prize for Poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Colorado Review, The Claudius App, Fence, Denver Quarterly and Volt.

Autry’s new book is Choosing Gratitude: Learning to Love the Life You Have.

A former Fortune 500 executive, Autry is an author, poet, and consultant whose work has had significant influence on leadership thinking.

He is the author of 10 books, and his writings have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. Featured in Bill Moyers’ PBS series The Power of the Word and in Moyers’ book The Language of Life, Autry has also been noted on National Public Radio via Garrison’s Keillor’s “Writer’s Corner.” He serves on the national advisory board of Poets & Writers, Inc.

Porter’s debut novel is In Between Days, a “Discover Great New Writers” selection about the vagaries of love and family, about betrayal and forgiveness, about the possibility and impossibility of coming home. Barry Hannah raved, “Andrew Porter is a born storyteller . . . He makes his own space instantly and invites you in. Hats off.”

Porter is the author of the story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and he has received a Pushcart Prize, a James Michener/Copernicus Fellowship, and the W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts.

His work has appeared in One Story, the Threepenny Review, and on public radio's “Selected Shorts.” He teaches fiction writing and directs the creative writing program at Trinity University in San Antonio.

Koethe’s new poetry collection is ROTC kills. He has been Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the first poet laureate of Milwaukee. His collections include North Point North, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Falling Water, which won the Kingsley-Tufts Award. In 2011, he received the Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman is the new book by Kessler-Harris, the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History at Columbia University and former president of the Organization of American Historians. She specializes in the history of American labor and the comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender.

Chafe’s latest is Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal, which analyzes the Clintons’ political careers through the prism of their personal relationship.

Chafe is the former Dean of the faculty of arts and sciences and former vice provost at Duke University, where he is currently an Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History. He is co-founder of the Duke-UNC Center for Research on Women, the Duke Center for the Study of Civil Rights and Race Relations, and the Duke Center for Documentary Studies.

The Writers’ Workshop is a unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the UI Graduate College. For accommodations at the live events, contact jan@prairielights.com. For a UI arts calendar and details of upcoming events, visit the new Arts Iowa website.