SPECIAL TICKETED EVENT!  Tickets are $32 + fees ($40 total) and can be purchased through The Englert Box Office. Each ticketholder will receive a signed paperback copy of The Demon of Unrest at the event.
 
Prairie Lights and the Englert Theatre present Erik Larson, who will talk about his nonfiction thriller, The Demon of Unrest, which brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War. Described by Publishers Weekly as “Twisty and cinematic . . . A mesmerizing and disconcerting look at an era when consensus dissolved into deadly polarization,” The Demon of Unrest is a #1 New York Times Bestseller, and a PARADE Best Book of the Year. 
 
Erik Larson is the author of six previous national bestsellers—The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm—which have collectively sold more than ten million copies. His books have been published in nearly twenty countries. Larson is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Russian history, language and culture; and he received a masters in journalism from Columbia University. He has worked at the Bucks County Courier Times, been a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, a contributing writer for Time Magazine, and his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and other publications.
 
Larson has also taught non-fiction writing at San Francisco State, the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, the University of Oregon, and the Chuckanut Writers Conference in Bellingham, Wash., and has spoken to audiences from coast to coast. A former resident of Seattle, he now lives in Manhattan.
 
Larson will be joined in conversation with Inara Verzemnieks. Verzemnieks is the Associate Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program, known as the number one MFA program of its kind in the United States. An associate professor and member of the NWP faculty since 2015, Verzemnieks transitioned to academia after an award-winning career in daily journalism, where she was part of the staff of Pulitzer-Prize winning newsrooms, from the Washington Post to the Portland Oregonian. As a freelancer, she has also worked for magazines such as The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine. She is a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing, and a Pushcart Prize Winner. Her memoir, Among the Living and the Dead, published by W.W. Norton, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. She lives in Iowa City.

About Inara Verzemnieks:

Inara Verzemnieks is the Associate Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program, known as the
number one MFA program of its kind in the United States. An associate professor and member
of the NWP faculty since 2015, Verzemnieks transitioned to academia after an award-winning
career in daily journalism, where she was part of the staff of Pulitzer-Prize winning newsrooms,
from the Washington Post to the Portland Oregonian. As a freelancer, she has also worked for
magazines such as The Atlantic and The New York Times Magazine. She is a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing, and a Pushcart Prize Winner. Her memoir, “Among the Living
and the Dead,” published by W.W. Norton, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice.