UI Nonfiction Writing Program alum Micah Fields reads from his new book, We Hold Our Breath: A Journey to Texas Between Storms, on Thursday, Oct. 19 at 7 p.m. at Prairie Lights Books. This Krause Series in Contemporary Nonfiction event is sponsored by the Nonfiction Writing Program. All are welcome.

We Hold Our Breath is a unique and poetic blend of reportage, history, and memoir.

John D’Agata says of We Hold Our Breath, “Rather than blindly condemning its industry, its sprawl, its ugliness, or its doom, Micah Fields’s loving, honest, and beautiful debut is a portrait of Houston by a native son who might not call the city home anymore, but who still recognizes its place in his heart, the same place where all of our hometowns reside, where every town that’s left, forgotten, flown over, or ignored remains in spite of ourselves. We Hold Our Breath is a portrait of us.”

Micah Fields is a writer, teacher, and fly-fishing guide on the Missouri River. A graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, his work has been published in the Oxford American, Gulf Coast, Baffler, Columbia Journalism Review, Field and Stream, and other outlets. He served as a Marine Corps infantry rifleman from 2007 to 2011 and is a combat veteran of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. He lives in Helena, Montana.