Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Michelle Huneven will read from her newest novel, Bug Hollow. Featuring and examining the lives of a family rocked by the tragic death of their oldest child Ellis shortly after he graduated from high school, Bug Hollow is praised by Booklist as "a gift" and "a family story that speaks of the joys, sorrows, and surprising possibilities of human connection," while Ann Napolitano, bestselling author of Hello Beautiful, says, "Reading the novel feels like watching a master painter at work: color is laid down, forms emerge, and then at the end your breath is taken away, because it has all come together." Bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had and Same as it Ever Was (and former Prairie Lights bookseller!) Claire Lombardo also praises Bug Hollow, calling it "a novel that lays bare the tenderness of the world, exploring its breadth and smallness at once."
Michelle Huneven is the author of Round Rock, Jamesland, Blame, Off Course, Search, and Bug Hollow. Her books have been New York Times Notable Books and finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a James Beard Award, and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received her master’s in fine arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing at the University of California, Los Angeles (penguinrandomhouse.com).
Huneven will be joined in conversation by Candice Wuehle. Wuehle is the author of the novel Monarch, an NPR Best Book of the Year, as well as the poetry collection Fidelitoria: Fixed or Fluxed, Bound, and Death Industrial Complex. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas. Her next novel, Ultranatural, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press in Spring 2026.
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