Douglas Bauer Reading: November 1 & 2

Douglas Bauer, author of What Happens Next? Matters of Life and Death, will be giving readings today and tomorrow. He will be in Iowa City at Prairie Lights tonight, November 1. If you can't make it, make sure to head out to the Wonder of Words Festival tomorrow in Des Moines. Bauer will be reading at the Des Moines Public Library in the afternoon.

We hope you can join us!

Praise for What Happens Next?
"This remarkable memoir-in-essays respects time but is not enslaved to it. Bauer moves in circular fashion among incidents that foreshadow later ones and recall earlier. It's not a linear but a spiral history, which touches us and then touches again. As for the language: in each sentence each word seems the only possible choice. How easily the prose lets us read it; what artistic intensity made it that way."—Edith Pearlman, author, Binocular Vision, winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award

What Happens Next? Matters of Life and Death by Douglas Bauer

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

Many species of sunflowers, asters, and goldenrods bring up parade’s end in September and early October, some flowering well after the first autumn frost. Canada goldenrod, with a plumelike flower head, and rigid goldenrod, with a flat-topped flower head, are two of the most common species. Four species of asters are often abundant in central Iowa.

Carl Kurtz, A Practical Guide to Prairie Reconstruction

UI Press Annual Holiday Sale: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? and OTHERS HAD IT WORSE

The University of Iowa Press will be kicking off their annual holiday sale tomorrow! Find great books for up to 65% off for all the readers in your life. Don't miss out on these unbeatable prices for two of our newest books:

What Happens Next? Matters of Life and Death
by Douglas Bauer
Iowa and the Midwest Experience

"A literate, thoughtful memoir/essay collection from the heartland."—Kirkus

"This remarkable memoir-in-essays respects time but is not enslaved to it. Bauer moves in circular fashion among incidents that foreshadow later ones and recall earlier. It's not a linear but a spiral history, which touches us and then touches again. As for the language: in each sentence each word seems the only possible choice. How easily the prose lets us read it; what artistic intensity made it that way."—Edith Pearlman, author, Binocular Vision, winner of the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award

Regular Price: $17.00
Sale Price: $9.00

Others Had It Worse: Sour Dock, Moonshine, and Hard Times in Davis County, Iowa
by Vetra Melrose Padget Covert and Chris D. Baker
Bur Oak Book

"A rare, insightful, and intimate work of history. . . . Like the frames on a zoetrope, these brief snippets run together to create a rich, vivid view of a bygone era."—Publishers Weekly

"Chris Baker has not only preserved the life of one woman but has also given us a way to read a text that follows its own path. By valuing what would typically be overlooked, he has broadened our understanding of life writing and illuminated the daily effects of poverty and isolation, as well as the small joys that arise amid both. It is a song one should not miss hearing."—Jennifer Sinor, author, The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray's Diary

Regular Price: $17.95
Sale Price: $9.00

Excerpt from ESTHER'S TOWN

A fireplace provided the heat and was the stove to bake bread and prepare the meals. No family intentionally allowed the fire to go out, even in the heat of summer, when a bed of coals was kept outdoors for use when needed for cooking. There were no matches. A trestle-like table and a cupboard supported on one wall were provinces of the housewife. On another wall a rifle, bullet pouch, and a powder horn hung from pegs. The luxury of kerosene lamps was to come later and electric light much later yet. A shallow dish of lard or other grease with a loosely twisted cotton rag in it for a wick provided illumination of a sort. More sophisticated and somewhat scarce were candles fashioned from a mold that was shared by the settlement—an improvement upon dishes of grease. But often an open fireplace provided the family's only lighting on winter evenings.

Esther's Town, by Deemer Lee

Douglas Bauer: reading and Q&A session

Douglas Bauer will be reading from his newest book, What Happens Next? Matters of Life and Death as well as participating in a Q&A session at the University of Albany tomorrow.

Reading and Q&A
Date: Tuesday, October 29
Time: 8:00 P.M.
Location: Standish Reading Room at the University of Albany & the New York State Writers' Institute, Campus Center, Uptown Campus

If you're planning on attending, please join our Facebook event page! We hope you can make it!

Praise for What Happens Next?
"A literate, thoughtful memoir/essay collection from the heartland."—Kirkus

What Happens Next? Matters of Life and Death, by Douglas Bauer

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

A bird is a flash of color, a burst of song, or a high, aloof vigilance. It can be all gentleness and soft appeal, or baleful, raptorial harshness. It may be loathsome or lovable; regal or revolting. But stripped of all man-given personality, the bird is a fantastic mechanism hung with an array of Rube Goldberg gadgets that make life more liveable.

John Madson, Stories from Under the Sky