Posted by Meredith on Monday, Oct 12, 2015
The Iowa City Public Library and Prairie Lights are pleased to welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley to the Library on Monday, Oct. 26.
Smiley will read from her latest novel, Golden Age; the much-anticipated final volume in her Last Hundred Years trilogy, at 7 p.m. in Meeting Room A. Following Some Luck and Early Warning, Golden Age follows the next generation of Langdons in the 1980s as they face economic, social, political and personal challenges.
Smiley was born in California, but grew up in a suburb of St. Louis. After getting her BA at Vassar College in 1971, she traveled in Europe for a year before moving to Iowa City, where she subsequently earned an MA (1975), MFA (1976), and PhD (1978) at the University of Iowa. In 1981, she went to work at Iowa State University, where she taught until 1996.
She published her first novel, Barn Blind, in 1980. Her fifth novel, A Thousand Acres, a story based on William Shakespeare’s King Lear, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. It was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1997, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Jessica Lange, Jason Robards and Colin Firth.
Prairie Lights will have Smiley’s books available for purchase at the event.
Smiley’s reading will be broadcast live on The Library Channel, Iowa City cable channel 20.
For more information, contact the Library at 319-356-5200.