"Live From Prairie Lights is a first -- broadcasting a live radio program from an independent bookstore, which showcases the latest talents of established and new writers from here and aroundthe world. When doing a live show you never know what to expect. The potential for surprising, interesting, and profound moments is always there--we've experienced many throughout the years. As host, I enjoy being a catalyst, a bridge in the relationship between author and audience. That's what public radio is supposed to do, draw the public into an event, a place, a moment that touches them, teaches them, entertains and involves them. It's wonderful welcoming listeners, authors and audience members into this special public radio program."

--Julie Englander, Host, Live from Prairie Lights

Live From Prairie Lights Archives 2008

Daniel Mason
Daniel Mason, author of the bestselling, The Piano Tuner, read from his second novel, A Far Country. "This stunning novel traces 14-year-old Isabel's journey through a vast, unnamed country in search of her brother. A Far Country is a book about . . . people who live as subsistence farmers or flee their land to scrabble for a living in smog-choked megacities... But for a bit of historical luck, Far Country might be Britain. America, or anywhere else." —The New York Times Book Review

John Marks
Veteran journalist and former 60 Minutes producer, John Marks, read from and discussed, Reasons to Believe: One Man's Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind, an intimate portrait of one of the most influential forces in America today. Born again at age sixteen, John Marks later abandoned his faith. In Reasons to Believe he attempts to cross a deep cultural barrier to understand those who now condemn his way of life. He grapples with the message that millions of evangelicals attempt to deliver to their fellow citizens every day and speaks at length with missionaries, political activists, theologians, Christian musicians, and filmmakers.
"A work of courageous investigative journalism as well as a memoir of startling self-reflection—Marks writes with unfailing intelligence, insight, and deep compassion about evangelical Christianity." —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Kenny Fries
Kenny Fries, noted poet, critic, and essayist, is the author of Body Remember, a moving and memorable memoir of what it is like to live with a body you are told is less than perfect. Fries was born with incompletely formed legs, a congenital birth defect that had no scientific name but entailed multiple surgeries just to partially correct the disorder. His new book, The History of My Shoes And The Evolution of Darwin's Theory. Alternating between accounts of Charles Darwin's and Alfred Russel Wallace's investigations of adaptation and variation and his own challenging odyssey as a disabled man, the author offers us a unique take on the idea of ‘survival of the fittest.’ Not only a riveting and colorful account of Darwin's and Wallace's journeys and discoveries but a story of personal evolution and the capacity for change under duress, this is an unforgettable and inspiring book."— L. Paus, Eliott Bay Book Company Book Notes

Askold Melnyczuk
Ukrainian-American novelist and founding editor of the Agni Review, Askold Melnyczuk, read from his latest novel House of Widows. A bitter historian in Vienna, traumatized by his father’s death sixteen years ago, is called out to from the past by a few mysterious objects that had belonged to his father, which lead him on a quest ending in Ukraine. An emotional and thoughtful novel about our inability to escape our histories. Melnyczuk’s first novel, What is Told, was a New York Times Notable Book, and his second, Ambassador of the Dead, was Los Angeles Times Book of the Year.

Patrick McGrath
English gothic novelist Patrick McGrath read from his new novel, Trauma, the haunting story of a psychiatrist from a deeply dysfunctional family falling into darkness and isolation in middle age.
McGrath, known for his undependable narrators with dark secrets in their pasts will disappoint none of his fans with Trauma. His best-known book is Spider for which he scripted the film starring Ralph Fiennes as the deeply disturbed title character. "Trauma reminds you of how satisfying it is to be unable to put a book down and then when it's over to be sorry and relieved to enter your comparatively unhaunted life." —Francine Prose

Dwight Hoover
Dwight Hoover, emeritus professor of history at Ball State University, read from A Good Day's Work: An Iowa Farm in the Great Depression. This unvarnished memoir of life on an Iowa farm in the midst of the depression is a fascinating account of farm life in transition. It is a detailed description of what it was like to be a boy with adult responsibilities in a difficult time. "The most detailed and artful telling of the experience of family farming that I have read" —Richard Quinney, author of Of Time and Place and Tales From the Middle Border

Eugene Drucker
Eugene Drucker plays first violin for the Emerson String Quartet, but he is also the author of The Savior, a powerful novel set at the end of World War II. Young violinist Gottfried Keller is charged with the task of playing for prisoners in a camp. "Eugene Drucker's description of music illuminates the text in a way that a non-musical writer would be incapable of." —Kate Atkinson This program includes Drucker playing Bach's Chaconne, which is the music that is portrayed in the book.

Loreen Herwaldt
Loreen Herwaldt, who holds joint appointments in the Departments of Internal Medicine and Epidemiology at The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, read from her groundbreaking guide to validating the feelings of the ill, Patient Listening: A Doctor's Guide. She was joined by five of her student doctors in a reader's threatre of selections from the illness stories of two dozen writer-patients to show health care providers how to gain the most from their interactions with patients. Oliver Sacks, Jane Smiley, Steve Kuusisto and Mary Swander are among the writers included in the volume.

Laura Flynn
Laura Flynn read from Swallow the Ocean, her beautifully written memoir of growing up with a schizophrenic mother. Flynn, who teaches writing at The University of Minnesota, does a remarkable job of describing what it's like for a child to experience a parent's mental illness. "Laura Flynn has given us an indispensable memoir, luminous and strangely heartening, a work of consummate grace and hard-won bouyancy. It's a triumph of spirit and a mesmerizing read." —Patricia Hampl, author of The Florist's Daughter.

Karen Joy Fowler
Karen Joy Fowler, author of the best-selling Jane Austen Book Club, read from and discussed her new novel, Wit's End. Fowler is one of our wittiest and most imaginative writers of fiction, and her new novel features an eccentric writer of crime fiction who builds an elaborate dollhouse diorama for each of her murder scenes, and has an intense fan base, which causes her and her far-flung family all manner of trouble.

Joshua Ferris
Iowa Writer's Workshop graduate Joshua Ferris read from his first novel, Then We Came to the End. In 2007, the book was a finalist for a National Book Award and named by The New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of the Year. Then We Came to the End tells the story of an ad agency in decline, circa 2001. "We had a toy client, a car client, a long-distance carrier and a pet store," readers are told. Ferris uses the first person plural to present the agency's collective voice in the midst of ongoing layoffs. It's an audacious narrative gimmick that could easily collapse and yet never does." —Powell's

Thomas Cahill
Thomas Cahill is an American scholar and writer best known for The Hinges of History series, a prospective seven-volume series recounting formative moments in Western civilization. To date, the series includes: How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, Desire of the Everlasting Hills:The World Before and After Jesus, Sailing the Wine Dark Seas: Why the Greeks Matter, Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe. He was on the paperback book tour of his latest book, Mysteries of the Middle Ages.

Chip Kidd
Chip Kidd read from his new novel, The Learners. He is also the author The Cheese Monkeys—a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and is a book jacket designer credited for revolutionizing the way modern book are packaged. He has written about graphic design and popular culture for McSweeney's , Vogue and The New York Times. USA Today has called him "the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design." He is also a musician and his this program we hear samples of from his band called, "Artbreak."
The Learners "is a roguish satire of 1960's advertising gone mad and is delightfully shrewd, droll and urbane... A must read for the ambitious, creative or chemically unbalanced." —Augusten Burroughs

Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman is one of our finest mystery writers. As the creator of the Tess Monaghan series, all set in her hometown Baltimore, Lippman serves up plot, character, action, sex and history in 12 (and counting) mysteries. Her latest in the series is, Another Thing to Fall. “She is among that select group of novelists who have invigorated the crime fiction arena with smart, innovative and exciting work.” —George Pelecanos

David Shields
The process of aging is the central conceit of David Shields’ new book, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead. Part memoir, part academic text, Shields traces the arc of the human body and mind in three main aspects: biological, philosophical (musings on aging from Tolstoy to Tarantino), and personal (his dad is ninety-five and more virile than he is). Triangular in construction, the book casts ideas and stories out to both daughter and father and then reels it all back in.
He is also the author of Dead Languages, Handbook for Drowning, Remote and Black Planet and Heroes: A Novel.

LeAnne Howe
LeAnne Howe read from and talked with us about her novel, Miko Kings:An Indian Baseball Story. The story is set in Indian Territory’s Ada, Oklahoma during the baseball fever of 1907, but moves back and forth from 1969, during the Vietnam War, to the present. The story focuses on an Indian baseball team but offers a new understanding of the term “America’s favorite pastime.” For tribes in Indian Territory, baseball was an extension of a sport they’d been playing for centuries before their forced removal to Indian Territory.

Kevin Brockmeier
Kevin Brockmeier, winner of O’Henry, Calvino, Nelson Algren, James Michener and NEA awards, read from his new collection of 13 stories The View From The Seventh Layer. “Brockmeier is one of my very favorite writers. What amazes me most about him isn’t his daunting technical chops or his Millhauser-sized imagination, but that in his finest moments he combines these strengths with a deeper sense of the joys and sorrows of life. These stories are wise and touching, not merely full of delightful surprises but full of heart.” —Stewart O’Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster

Rebecca Ryan
Rebecca Ryan discussed her book, Live First, Work Second. Ryan's company, Next Generation Consulting, advises governmental entities and businesses on how to attract and retain young talent. The book is based on research which iincludes 25,000 interviews with 20-40 year-olds on how to bridge generational differences to the make the workplace more effective. Economist and author Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class) says in his forward to the book that Ryan's is a "clear and incredibly grounded and intelligent voice in our dialogues about creativity, innovation and community development."

Adam Langer
Novelist Adam Langer, author of California Avenue, a romp through ‘70s Chicago, moves his sharp satirical eye, and his manic Marx Brothers pacing to New York City’s Upper West Side with Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A Flat. The real estate business is his big fish, but he fries just about every variety of little fish in New York along the way.
“Adam Langer, who is either a genius or a schizophrenic, inhabits his characters—from a pregnant woman to a pigeon—with brilliant stealth and lovable insouciance.” —Jennifer Belle

Richard Price
Novelist Richard Price, author of Clockers and Freedomland, read from his new novel, Lush Life. Price, always a compassionate listener, may be our finest writer of dialogue. His characters bristle with vitality. Lush Life is New York City, top to bottom, as it screeches into the 21st Century. “Wry, profane, hilarious, and tragic, sometimes in a single line, Lush Life is a masterwork. I doubt anyone will write a novel this good for a long, long time. —Dennis Lehane

Aryn Kyle
Novelist Aryn Kyle read from her first novel, The God of Animals, the story of a twelve-year-old girl forced to be responsible for keeping her beleaguered family and their Colorado ranch together in hard times.
"No novel in recent memory has captured the West so well. Kyle is an absolute discovery, her book is a perfect novel." —Andrew Sean Greer

Charles Baxter
Charles Baxter, one of our finest writers of fiction, read from his latest novel, The Soul Thief. The story is at once lyrical and spooky, acutely observant in its sensual and emotional detail, and audaciously unsettling in its vision. It gives a whole new meaning to identity theft! Charles Baxter is also the author of the books, The Feast of Love, Saul and Patsy, and Shadow Play.

Alan Drew
Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Alan Drew read from his first novel, Garden of Water. It is set in Turkey and based on a complex relationship between the families of American ex-patriot teachers and an impoverished Kurdish family holding on to ritual and tradition. Drew has lived in Turkey and has a fine ear for character and cultural difference. A beautifully imagined novel written in stirring prose.

Doug Thorpe
Naturalist and non-fiction writer Doug Thorpe read from his new book, Rapture of the Deep, winner of the David Family Environmental Book Award. It explores the relationship between our minds and the great world outside us—"the wild truth"—as Thorpe calls it. “Thorpe helps us understand what Thoreau meant when he said that in wilderness is the preservation of the world.” —Bill McKibben

Sheryl St. Germain and Paul Brooke
Sheryl St. Germain read from her latest collection, Let It Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems. Born in New Orleans, St.Germain is currently the Director of Poetry and Non-fiction Writing at Chatham College in Pittsburgh. She was joined by Paul Brooke who read selections from his collection, Light and Matter: Photographs and Poems of Iowa.

Andrea Hollander Budy
Prize-winning poet Andrea Hollander Budy will read from her most recent collection of poems, Woman in the Painting. She has published three collections of poems including House Without a Dreamer which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Since 1991 she has worked as Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College. "Budy's impeccable conversational diction does just what a poem should do; it raises the hairs on the nape of your neck." —Maxine Kumin

Darwin Day with evolutionary biologist
Massimo Pigliucci
In an event co-sponsored the University of Iowa Department of Biological Sciences to celebrate Darwin Day in Iowa City featuring renowned evolutionary biologist, philosopher, and professor at SUNY Stonybrook, Dr Massimo Pigliucci. His book Denying Evolution has been praised for its clear and wise advocacy of the Darwinian view of life.

Robert Hellenga
Robert Hellenga, novelist and professor at Knox College, will read from his new novel, The Italian Lover. A story of love and death and memory and desire—the ways lives are launched, enjoyed, endured, and made meaningful. Hellenga is the author of the national bestsellers, The Fall of the Sparrow, and The Sixteen Pleasures.

Natalie Goldberg
Renowned writing teacher, Natalie Goldberg, author of the ground-breaking Writing Down the Bones read from her new book, Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice Of Writing Memoir. This useful and inspiring new book is based on the idea that in order to write a memoir we must first know how to remember. Through timed, associative and meditative exercises Old Friend From Far Away guides us to do just that.

Mary Relindes Ellis
Mary Relindes Ellis, read from her riveting new novel, The Turtle Warrior. Domestic violence, war, and the search for self identity weave through a story of two rural Wisconsin families; both of them unwittingly have the ability to save one another.
"A strong, bold novel that cuts a hard bargain between violence and forgiveness. "Ellis writes about a family you’d never want to be a part of, but it is one you will never forget. An astonishing and eloquent debut by a writer you’ll hear from again.” —author Pat Conroy

Abigail Foerstner
Internationally renowned Iowa native space scientist James Van Allen is the subject of a new biography by Northwestern University Professor Abigail Foerstner. Foerstner visited the program to discuss her book, James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles. Born and raised in Mt. Pleasant, Van Allen was among the principle scientific investigators for 24 space missions, including Explorer1 (1958), Mariner 2 (1962) and Pioneer 10 and 11 (1970s). He was the lead discoverer, and namesake of the Van Allen radiation belts.

Tim Fay and the Wapsipinicon Almanac
Tim Fay, publisher, editor and printer of Iowa’s award-winning Wapsipinicon Almanac was joined by a number of contributors to the latest edition of the journal for a lively evening of entertainment.
This is literature rooted in rich Iowa soil; intelligent, witty and printed on an antique press.

Michael Pollan
The author of The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma Michael Pollan discusses his latest book, In Defense of Food. The book shows us how, despite the daunting dietary landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Michael Pollan website.

This program was co-sponsored by the New Pioneer Co-Op and the Iowa City Public Library.

Susan Sontag & Norman Mailer
Great American authors Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer are featured in this Live From Prairie Lights. In 2001, Susan Sontag visited the program and read selections from and discussed her novel, In America. Later in the hour, you'll hear selections from Norman Mailer's appearance on the program recorded in 1998. He was on tour with his book, Time of Our Time.