Prairie Lights Books, the UI Office of the Provost, and the UI Office of the Vice President for Research invite you to join them for a special Book Matters celebrating acclaimed author Jamel Brinkley, recipient of a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2022-2023 Rome Prize in Literature.
Provost Kevin Kregel will recognize Brinkley for his external awards. Brinkley will read a selection from his work and then join Stephen Lovely, novelist and director of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, for conversation and audience Q&A. Light refreshments will follow the event.
“Jamel Brinkley is one of the best story writers we have…Read everything this man writes, and know the world anew.” —Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
Jamel Brinkley’s short story collection, A Lucky Man, won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award, the 2019 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the 2018 Story Prize, the 2018 John Leonard Prize for Best First Fiction, and the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Fiction.
He graduated from the UI Writers’ Workshop in 2015, after which he received the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Residency Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Fiction at Stanford University. At Columbia University, Brinkley received undergraduate and graduate degrees in English and Comparative Literature as well as a bachelor’s degree in African American Studies.
He was raised in the Bronx and in Brooklyn. He is an associate professor and teaches fiction in the UI Writers’ Workshop.