Date: Monday, November 9
Time: 12:30–1:30 p.m.
Location: Room 2520-D, University Capitol Centre (UCC), 200 South Capitol St., Iowa City, & via Zoom
👉 RSVP by November 4.

Coffee and cookies will be available for in-person attendees starting at 12:00 p.m.

We all take pride in Iowa City's designation as a World City of Literature. So what's happening now with Iowa writers and Iowa-themed books? Professor Loren Glass, Department of English, and Prairie Lights Bookstore owner Jan Weissmiller will share updates, and Jan will even bring along some books in a variety of genres, just in time to be considered as holiday gifts.

Loren Glass is the Department Chair and M.F. Carpenter Professor in the Department of English with a joint appointment with the Center for the Book. His research and teaching focus on literature and culture of the 20th- and 21st-century United States, with a particular interest in literary modernism broadly conceived. He holds a joint appointment with the Center for the Book, and his more recent scholarship engages the fields of book studies and publishing history. He has been studying the history of creative writing and is currently working on an institutional history of creative writing at Iowa to be called “University of Literature.”

Jan Weissmiller received an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She was the winner of the Loess Hills Poetry Prize in 1999 for her collection In Divided Light and is an editor of A Poetry Criticism Reader (University of Iowa Press, 2006). She was the first full-time employee of Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City. In 2008, she and fellow poet Jane Mead bought the store from the original owner, James Harris.