Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduates Robert Fernandez and Mary Hickman will read from their poetry at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.

Poet and editor Fernandez is the author of the collections We Are Pharaoh and Pink Reef. Selected as a New American Poet by the Poetry Society of America, Fernandez has won a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Poetry and a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Hickman runs Cosa Nostra Editions with Fernandez and makes artist’s books with the University of Iowa Center for the Book. Her work has been featured in the Boston Review “Poet’s Sampler” as well as in the anthology The Arcadia Project. She is the author of three chapbooks—among them How to Be Healthy and Heal and ecce animot—and one full-length collection forthcoming from Rescue Press.

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop is a graduate program in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all UI-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to attend this reading, call Jan Weissmiller in advance at Prairie Lights at 319-337-2681.

For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the Arts Iowa website.