University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop alumna Jenny Zhang will be joined by Zach Schomburg to present a free poetry reading at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 18, in Prairie Lights Books and on a Virtual Writing University live stream.

Zhang’s first collection is Dear Jenny, We Are All Find, of which Elizabeth Robinson wrote, “This book brings to mind a 21st century Whitman, only female, Chinese, and profoundly scatological.”

Before coming to the UI, Zhang was a union organizer for Chinese homecare workers in San Francisco, a youth organizer for the writing nonprofit 826 Valencia, and an English teacher in a Hungarian village in the mountains of Romania.

Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in Octopus, Diagram, Vice, the Iowa Review and The Walrus. Last year, she won second place in the Zoetrope All-Story Short Fiction Contest, and you can find her at www.jennybagel.com.

Schomburg is also the author The Man Suit, and he co-edits Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books. He teaches at Portland State University and Portland Community College.

A review in the Huffington post stated, "Schomburg is possibly the man who will save poetry for all of those readers who are about to give up on the genre. Scary No Scary is both funny and ridiculously original. A playful, mournful, and sometimes sweet collection full of fantastic images and odd dialogue."

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