Sunday, January 25, 2009

Feb 3 and 5 2009 - Charles Bock, Eula Biss read for 'Live from Prairie Lights'

The "Live from Prairie Lights" reading series, which is streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University Web site, http://writinguniversity.uiowa.edu, will feature fiction writer Charles Bock on Tuesday, Feb. 3, and UI Nonfiction Writing Program alumna Eula Biss on Thursday, Feb. 5. The readings will be free events at 7 p.m. in the Prairie Lights bookstore at 15 S. Dubuque St. in downtown Iowa City.

C-Span Book TV will be on hand for Biss' reading from "Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays," an exploration of race and racial identity that was the winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Biss, who is also the author of the prose/poetry volume "The Balloonists," teaches at Northwestern University and is co-editor of Essay Press.

Bock is the author of the acclaimed 2008 novel "Beautiful Children," which is just out in paperback. A piece in the New York Times Book Review, which selected the novel as a Notable Book of the Year, proclaimed, "Bock's vision and voice create a fictional landscape as corruptly compelling as Vegas, and as beautiful as the illusions its characters cling to for survival. . . . One word: bravo."

A review in Washington Post Book World called the book "exceptional" and observed, "[Bock's] ability to share a deep understanding of America's million or so lost street kids and their tormented parents gives the book a whiff of greatness. . . . This novel deserves to be read more than once because of the extraordinary importance of its subject matter."

Bock's Web site is http://www.beautifulchildren.net.

For UI arts information and calendar updates, visit http://www.uiowa.edu/artsiowa. To receive UI arts news by e-mail, go to http://list.uiowa.edu/archives/acr-news.html, click the link "Join or leave the list ( or change settings )" and follow the instructions.

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