Press ReleaseBook Festival, ICPL announce LIT Talks series


The Iowa City Book Festival, in partnership with the Iowa City Public Library, will host a series of events designed to bring the authors of books about politics and social engagement to the library to discuss the ideas in those books: LIT Talks.

Building on the success of a similar track during the 2018 Iowa City Book Festival – including appearances by Ari Berman, Art Cullen, Dan Kauffman, and Silvia Hidalgo – the idea of LIT Talks is to shed light on the issues of the day and to promote the ongoing community dialogue about those topics.

The first event will be a reading and discussion by Peter Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., and newly declared candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. Buttigieg is touring in support of his new memoir, Shortest Way Home: One Mayor's Challenge and a Model for America's Future. He will appear at 7 p.m. on March 4, in Meeting Room A of the Iowa City Public Library.

Buttigieg is in his eighth and final year as Mayor of South Bend. He was first elected mayor in 2011 at only 29 years old, and re-elected in 2015 with 80 percent of the vote. He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve, and took an unpaid seven months leave during his mayoral term for a deployment to Afghanistan. For his counterterrorism work, he earned the Joint Service Commendation Medal. A national lecturer and TEDx speaker, as well as a Rhodes Scholar, Buttigieg was educated at Harvard and Oxford. He and his husband, Chasten Glezman, live in South Bend.

Prairie Lights Books will be on site to sell copies of Shortest Way Home.