Central Ohio-based author and Iowa Writers' Workshop alum Michelle Herman will read from her newest book, an essay collection called If You Say So. Galileo Press, which published If You Say So and which originated in Iowa City in the 1970s, describes Herman's essays as "true stories about loss and reinvention, longing and loneliness, friendship and community, and family and home—and dance, the dedicated practice of which has led her on an unexpected new path. This is a book about grief and the way it lives in the body—and joy, and the way it lives in the body too." Maggie Smith, bestselling author of the poetry collection Good Bones and You Could Make This Place Beautiful praises If You Say So as "Funny, self-effacing, heartbreaking, and wise...Herman shows us that life, in all of its choreography and improvisation, really is like ballet."

Michelle Herman is the author of nine previous books – the novels Missing, Dog, Devotion, and, most recently, Close-Up; the story collection A New and Glorious Life; three earlier collections of essays – The Middle of Everything, Stories We Tell Ourselves, and Like A Song; and a book for children, A Girl’s Guide to Life . She taught creative writing for many years at Ohio State, where she was a founder of the MFA program in creative writing. Since 2019, she has been dispensing advice every Sunday as a columnist for Slate. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband, the painter Glen Holland.

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Readings at Prairie Lights are sponsored by the Writing University.}