Past Writing Classes & Workshops 

Tuesday, May 6, 6:30p CST

Jeff Alessandrelli is most recently the author of the book And Yet (Future Tense Books, 2024). The Kenyon Review called his 2019 poetry collection Fur Not Light an “example of radical humility…its poems enact a quiet but persistent empathy in the world of creative writing.”

Recent work by Alessandrelli appears or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, and Buckmxn Journal.
 
In addition to his writing Jeff also directs the nonprofit book press/record label Fonograf Editions. Before moving to Portland, he lived in Lincoln.​

Tuesday, March 4, 6:30p CST

Originally from rural Nebraska, Elizabeth Clark Wessel now lives in Stockholm, Sweden and works as a translator of Swedish literature.

She’s the author of four chapbooks of poetry, and her poems have appeared widely in journals, including Fence, Boston Review, and the American Poetry Review.

None of It Belongs to Me (Game Over Books, 2024) is her first full-length collection.​

Saturday, January 25, 10:00a CDT

How do the landscapes we've lived in shape the way we think, feel, and create? In Crossing Open Ground, Barry Lopez suggests that “the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes.” There is a profound connection between our inner lives and the physical spaces we inhabit.

     In this generative workshop, we will consider the ways the physical world influences our interior landscapes, and how those interior landscapes, in turn, might shape our poems. 

     Through guided prompts, reflective discussion, and close readings of place-inspired poems, you’ll learn to translate your experiences of land — whether wide-open spaces, urban corners, or intimate settings — into vivid, textured poetry.

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JESSICA POLI is the author of Red Ocher (University of Arkansas Press), which was a finalist for the 2023 Miller Williams Prize. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, North American Review, Poet Lore, and Salamander, among other places.

     She is currently a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is an Associate Editor for Prairie Schooner.

Tuesday, December 3rd, 6:30p CST

Julie S. Paschold (Tansy Julie the Soaring Eagle) is a queer disabled poet and artist from Nebraska. They have their BS and MS in agronomy from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Their first book, "Horizons" (Atmosphere Press) is a collection of poetry honoring soil, one of our nonrenewable resources.

     Julie has been published in AKA’s Advocate, Fine Lines, Plainsongs, The Awakenings Review, the Nebraska Writer’s Guild, The Raven’s Perch, Iconoclast, The Radical Teacher, and several publications on medium.com.

     Two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in contests by Writer's Digest in 2021 and 2022.

     Julie sells their sketches at Ravenwood in Norfolk, NE. For more, read her blog on medium or blogspot.​

Saturday, October 26th, 10:00a CDT

By now you've heard writers—especially poets and lyric essayists—suggest that you should let your content inform your form as often as you've heard them say show don't tell, though as it is with most things, both are easier said than done. The former requires us to write from the body while letting go—a feat not easily mastered by any writer and complicated even more by difficult content. Often what we need most is permission and imaginative examples. This workshop will provide you with both. 

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LISA FAY COUTLEY is the author of HOST (Wisconsin Poetry Series, 2024), tether (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), Errata (Southern Illinois University, 2015), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, In the Carnival of Breathing (BLP, 2011), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition, Small Girl: Micromemoirs (Harbor Editions, 2024), and she is the editor of In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (BLP, 2023).

     Her poetry has been awarded an NEA Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Levis Prize, chosen by Dana Levin, and the 2021 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz. 

     Recent prose & poetry appears in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Barrelhouse, Brevity, North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, and on The Slowdown. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry & CNF in the Writer’s Workshop at UNO.​

Tuesday, September 3rd 6:30p CST

Twyla M. Hansen’s newest poetry book is "Feeding the Fire." She is a Larksong Writers Place founding board member, Humanities Nebraska Speaker’s Bureau writing presenter since 1992, and was the first female Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018.

     Recent honors include the Nebraska Literary Heritage Award, Nebraska Center for the Book President’s Award, and a Lincoln High School Distinguished Alumni Award. Her book "Rock • Tree • Bird" won the 2018 Nebraska Book Award and WILLA Literary Award for poetry.

     Twyla’s writing is published recently in Briar Cliff Review, Oakwood, Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, "More in Time: A Tribute to Ted Kooser, Nebraska Poetry Sesquicentennial Anthology 1867-2017," and on the websites of Academy of American Poets, Poetry Foundation, and Poetry Out Loud, plus many more.​

Saturday July 20th 10:00a CDT

Poetry is always about concision, about writing something small and quick with no excess of words or lines or ideas or lines like this way-too-long sentence. Let's see what we can do with shorter poems, fitting ideas into smaller spaces like snapshots or meditations. 

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MATT MASON is the Nebraska State Poet and was Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective from 2009-2022. Through the US State Department, he has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus.

     Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council.

     His work can be found in The New York Times, on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry, and more. Mason's 4th book, At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros, was released by The Old Mill Press in 2022.

     Matt is based out of Omaha with his wife, the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and daughters Sophia and Lucia. Find more on his website.​

Tuesday, June 4th 6:30p CST

Veronica Torraca-Bragdon is a poet, singer/songwriter, and special educator, having graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha with a degree in K-12 Vocal/Instrumental Education, then remaining a Maverick to receive her masters in Special Education. 

     Her poems have been set to music by Nebraska composer Dave M. Gardner, premiered by Omaha Symphonic Chorus and Bellevue Choral Society, along with being featured on the soundtrack of Japanese Anime REDLINE for lyrics and vocals.

     Her discussion questions have been incorporated into award-winning author Tammi Croteau’s books to extend learning about kindness and inclusion. 

Veronica’s original music can be found on her YouTube page, while her self-published first book, “Outside the Box, Inside the Wrapping”, is available on Amazon.

     She lives with her husband, Dan, and their son, Sullivan, in Papillion, NE.

Tuesday, April 20th 10:00a CDT

Poems often address those who cannot be reached. We appeal to the west wind or reproach an absent lover, knowing it is impossible for them to hear us and yet trusting in the power of poetic language to communicate. In this session, we will explore poems that can be read by everyone except the "you" to whom they are addressed. We will then experiment with using techniques such as invocation and apostrophe in our own poems. 

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ELEANOR REEDS (she/her) is a poet, essayist, critic, and educator from the United Kingdom who has served as the Associate Editor for Plainsongs for the past five years.

     Her work has appeared in aurora journal and Long River Review. She received a PhD in English from the University of Connecticut and currently teaches at Hastings College. 

Tuesday, March 5th 6:30p CST

Barbara Schmitz taught writing and literature at Northeast College for thirty years and initiated and ran the Visiting Writer Series there as well as edited the student magazine Voices From Out of Nowhere.

     Two of her books have won the Poetry Award from Nebraska Center for the book and she is a recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council. She had two poems selected for American Life in Poetry, newspaper column initiated by Ted Kooser, and one, Uniforms was also performed in the nude (by an acting troupe) during the Omaha Writing Festival.

     She studied with John Neihardt, William Stafford and was an apprentice to Allen Ginsberg, helping him assemble his notebooks. She is the Poet of Highway 81 where she lives with husband Bob (What Bob Says—Some More) writing to the sighing and whizzing of the traffic for over half her life. Latest Book: "Sundown at Faith Regional" Pinyon Publishing.

Saturday, January 27th 10:00a CST

Whether it is the arduous nature of looking, or the radical possibility of silence, wonder is always following us. At one moment, what appears as the vast sky, or a simple cup of coffee, on a second look becomes a miracle—a container of some wondrous secret.

     In this class, we'll explore poems that contain and investigate wonder. We’ll exit realism and delve into prompts that search out childlikeness, examine and define what wonder means to us and wander through the maze of gentle introspection. We will investigate what it means to write without metaphor and write with metaphor.

     We’ll visit the texts of the ancient Persian poets, and maybe poems by Mary Oliver, Ada Limon, Marie Howe, Wendell Berry and more. We'll consider different forms of short and long poems and find the structures that resonate with us. 

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RAMYA RAMANA is an award-winning American author, poet, lyricist and writer. She was born, raised and currently resides in New York.

     Ramana won the NY Knicks Poetry Slam, which awarded her a full tuition scholarship to St. John’s University. Soon after, she became the Youth Poet Laureate of NYC.

     She has since performed at events such as the US Open, Tribeca Film Festival, TV One’s “Verses and Flow,” Pharrell’s Adidas Campaign, SONY TV’s Asian Women in the Arts Awards, the Immigrant Gala, Apollo Theatre Slam Finals, Celebrate Bklyn!, the Source Magazine Festival and many more.

     Her work can be found on the Poetry Foundation and Academy of American Poets websites and in Seventh Wave and the Southampton Review. Ramana published her first collection of poems through Penmanship Books, which was released at Lincoln Center.

     In addition to performing and writing, Ramana has also worked as an educator and mentor for young poets and young women. She recently received her MFA in creative writing from the New School. Ramana is currently working as a librettist for an operetta film. Her hope is to remain a student of wonder and to explain truth sincerely through her work and her life.

Saturday, December 2nd 10:00a CST

In this session, we will study how poems rooted in geography and place—in Nebraska and beyond—have a powerful ability to evoke history, language, community, topography, and (in)justice. We will particularly focus on how a geographically-minded title can deeply anchor a poem for readers. Participants will read, write, and have the opportunity to generate place names that may be meaningful when sharing their personal histories through poems. 

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FREESIA McKEE (she/her) writes poetry, prose, and genres in-between. She’s the essays editor at South Florida Poetry Journal, a regular contributor to the Ploughshares blog, and teaches virtual writing classes to students all over the country from her home in Macomb, Illinois. Freesia’s work has appeared in Flyway, Bone Bouquet, So to Speak, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, CALYX, About Place Journal, and the Ms. Magazine Blog. Her poetry chapbook How Distant the City was published by Headmistress Press.

Saturday, October 21st 10:00a CST

When the favorite Chinese tea bowl of a 15th century shogun broke, his craftsman “fixed” it with a lacquer mixed with gold. The result? A beautiful testament to the vessel’s broken history and its transformation into a more profound entity that honors that brokenness.  

We’ll explore how poets, and we’ll even plumb some prose writers across time and place who have used a multitude of techniques such as deliberate disruption and associative meaning to expand, alchemize, and deepen their own “broken.”

To participate in the quick exercises scattered throughout this presentation, please bring in your own “broken” poetry and prose “half-starts,” an unrelated personal journal entry or two, a print out of facts and terms for an object/phenomena in the natural world that intrigues you  (for example, birds, wind, black holes, etc) and a quote from your favorite philosopher.  Plus paper and pen, laptop if that suits you better.

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KATHRYN WINOGRAD is a Colorado essayist, poet, and amateur photographer, who divides her time between a high-mountain meadow cabin above Phantom Canyon and the suburbs of Denver.

She is the author of seven books, including Slow Arrow: Unearthing the Frail Children, which received a Bronze Medal in Essay for the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards, and Air Into Breath, a finalist for the Yale Younger Award and a Colorado Book Award Winner in Poetry.

A long time educator and arts advocate, Kathy Winograd has taught creative writing for over 35 years to writers of all ages and experiences, from kindergartners to graduate MFA students.

Her award-winning poetry has appeared over the years in places as diverse as The New Yorker and Cricket Magazine for Children.

She received an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. from the University of Denver.  You can find out more about Kathy from 

www.kathrynwinograd.com.

Tuesday, September 5th 6:30p CST

Jessica Poli is the author of Red Ocher (University of Arkansas Press, 2023), which was chosen by Patricia Smith as a finalist for the Miller Williams Prize. Along with Marco Abel and Timothy Schaffert, she co-edited the collection More in Time: A Tribute to Ted Kooser, which won the Special Poetry Award in the 2022 Nebraska Book Awards.

     Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, North American Review, Poet Lore, and Salamander, among other places. Originally from Pennsylvania, she is currently a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Saturday, July 15th 10:00a CST

Most of us are here on the planet because our parents made love. And since lovemaking is so common, why are so many of us uncomfortable about writing about sex? In this workshop, we will acknowledge writing the sex poem as a necessary Rite of Passage for every poet. We will study both popular and obscure sex poems, and analyze their successes and failures. Finally, we’ll learn some best practices concerning writing the elegant sex poem, so that our sex poems make us proud, allow us to be unembarrassed when we read them, and turn readers on without turning them off.

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ADRIENNE CHRISTIAN is an Author and Fine Art Photographer. Her poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and photography have been featured in various journals including Prairie Schooner, Hayden’s Ferry Review, CALYX, phoebe, No Tokens, World Literature Today, and the Los Angeles Review as the Editor’s Choice. Her work has been anthologized widely. 

In 2021, she was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. In 2020, she won the Common Ground Review Poetry Award for her poem, Wedding Dress. In 2016, she won the Rita Dove International Poetry Award. And in 2007, she won the University of Michigan’s Five Under Ten Young Alumni Award. 

Adrienne is the author of three poetry collections – Worn (Santa Fe Writers Project, 2021), A Proper Lover, (Mainstreet Rag, 2017), and 12023 Woodmont Avenue (Willow Lit, 2003). She is an associate editor at Backbone Press, and founder of the Blue Ridge Mountains Writing Collective. 

She is a fellow of Cave Canem and Callaloo writing residencies. She has served as editor or jury member for various prizes including the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, the Penumbra Poetry and Haiku Contest, the Cave Canem Starshine and Clay Fellowship, and the Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Award. 

Adrienne has been featured on panels by Ms. Magazine and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan (2001), an MFA from Pacific University (2011), and a PhD from the University of Nebraska (2020).​

Tuesday, June 6th 6:30p CST

Chad M. Christensen is the managing editor of the WSC Press, director of the Plains Writers Series, and an associate professor at Wayne State College, where he teaches publishing and creative writing.

     His books of lo-fi poetry are Ground Bound and Shoot from the Hip (Pseudo Poseur Productions), and his latest poems have appeared in Sugar House Review and Plainsong. He also writes a column for The Big Smoke called “Boy with Shovel.”

Tuesday, May 2nd 6:30p CST

Tyler Michael Jacobs is the author of Building Brownville (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022). His poems have been featured on Nebraska Public Media’s Friday Live! His poetry has also appeared in Sierra Nevada Review, Pidgeonholes, Thin Air Magazine, White Wall Review, Funicular Magazine, and elsewhere.

     Tyler is an MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University where he is also a graduate assistant teaching English and Creative Writing.

Tuesday, March 7th 6:30p CST

Marjorie Saiser's eighth book, The Track the Whales Make: New & Selected Poems, is published by University of Nebraska Press in Ted Kooser’s series of Contemporary Poets and won the High Plains Book Award. Saiser’s Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press) won the Willa Award in 2014.

     She has received four Nebraska Book Awards and is co-editor of Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, a collection of writing by women of the Great Plains, and also co-editor of Road Trip, interviews with a dozen Nebraska writers. Saiser’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Alaska Poetry Review, Nimrod, Midwest Quarterly, and American Life in Poetry.

Saturday, January 21st 10:00a CST

How do lineation choices help poets achieve potent effects? An intuitive approach to lineation starts with the breath—with what our voices naturally do with syntax—but it doesn’t stop there. Using the work of Joy Harjo, Jericho Brown, Lorine Niedecker, W.S. Merwin, Ruth Stone, and others, as an example, we will explore how poet's use the poetic line to add layers of meaning to their work. In this workshop, we’ll attune ourselves to possibilities in lineation to build emotional resonance, enhance meaning, and delight readers.

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RADHA MARCUM's work is rooted in ecological, social, and personal landscapes of the American West. Her poetry collection, Bloodline, received the 2018 New Mexico Book Award in Poetry, and her poems appear widely in journals, including Pleiades, Gulf Coast, FIELD, West Branch, Bennington Review, and Poetry Northwest, among others. Radha lives in Colorado where she writes the "Poet to Poet" newsletter (poettopoet.substack.com) and teaches at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop.

Saturday, December 3rd 10:00a CST

In an essay on figurative language, D. A. Powell notes that “simile has fallen out of favor in some circles of contemporary poetic thought,” and is now used largely ironically, as in John Ashbery’s “Night falls like a wet sponge.” Maligned as the black sheep of the figurative language family and considered too “elementary” by some (likely because many of us first practiced similes in elementary school), similes nonetheless continue to dazzle readers with startling, visceral, and sometimes goofy associations. Using Powell’s essay as a jumping-off point and then looking at examples in poems and songs by Lucille Clifton, Leonard Cohen, Aracelis Girmay, Chelsey Minnis, José Olivarez, Anne Sexton, and others, we’ll discuss what makes a comparison take off or crash land, and then we’ll construct poems around some of our own similes, whose strangeness might stumble into the sublime.

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BECCA KLAVER is a writer, teacher, editor, scholar, and literary collaboration conjurer. She is the author of the poetry collections LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010), Empire Wasted (Bloof Books, 2016), and Ready for the World (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), as well as several chapbooks. Midwinter Constellation, a book cowritten with 31 other poets in homage to Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day, was published in early 2022 by Black Lawrence. As an editor, she co-founded Switchback Books, is currently co-editing the anthology Electric Gurlesque (Saturnalia Books) and has created pop-up journals such as Women Poets Wearing Sweatpants and Across the Social Distances. 

Tuesday, November 1st 6:30p CST

Lorraine Duggin is a lifelong Nebraskan, born in Omaha, where she has been teaching English as a Second Language and other English classes at Metropolitan Community College since 1999.

     Her B.A. and M.A. in English and Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing are from UNO and UN-L, respectively. 

Her poetry, fiction, memoirs, and articles have been published in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, North Atlantic Review, Short Story International, and many other journals and anthologies.

     Her work has been awarded several prizes in both writing and teaching. She has been a Master Artist with the Nebraska Arts Council and Iowa Arts Council's Poets in Schools/Communities programs since the 1980's.

     When not reading or writing, she enjoys spending time with family, outdoor activities like gardening and hiking, folk dancing in three groups, playing the recorder in an ensemble, and traveling, especially internationally.

Tuesday October 4th, 6:30p CST

Stacey Waite is Associate Professor of English and Graduate Chair at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln and is the author of: "Choke" (winner of the Frank O’Hara Prize for Poetry), "Love Poem to Androgyny, the lake has no saint" (Winner of the Snowbound Prize), and "Butch Geography" (Tupelo Press, 2013).

     Waite’s poems have been published in Court Green, Black Warrior Review, and Indiana Review. Additionally, Waite’s book, "Teaching Queer: Radical Possibilities for Writing and Knowing", was published in 2017 by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Saturday, August 20th CST

Initial understanding of eco-poetry was often intertwined with nature poetry. Poets for centuries have written about their environment to draw attention to its beauty. At a time when we have begun to feel the effects of climate change, contemporary poets have brought to the forefront the adverse effects of modernization of the planet.

In this workshop, we will read the work of poets such as Robert Frost, W.S. Merwin, Aimee Nezkhukumatathil, R.K. Narayan, Camille T. Dungy, and Yusef Komunyakaa. The session will combine technique, craft, writing time, and the time to share work. We will reimagine our roles in the current climate crisis via poetry, deciphering the difference between an environmental poem and an environmentalist poem.

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GAURI AWASTHI is an Indian poet and sustainability activist. An MFA graduate from McNeese State University, her work has received support from Sundress Academy For The Arts, Louisiana Office of Cultural Development, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and Kundiman.

Tuesday, July 5th, 6:30p CST

Brandy Prettyman is the author of "Forbidden Fruit: Poems of Love, Loss, Hope, and Regret".

A professional jack-of-all-trades, she earned a Bachelor in Business Administration and has spent the last decade (maybe it’s longer, but let’s not make this awkward) writing poetry that explores the dark emotions we face when confronted by our own morality and mortality.

Brandy lives in Papillion, Nebraska, and like to spend her spare time traveling the world with her trusty four-legged sidekick Mary Puppins. Most days she can be found drinking a large latte at her desk, frantically writing her thoughts down in verse before they disappear.

Saturday, May 14th, 10:00a CST

We all KNOW that metaphors and similes are important for poetry, we all had to learn that in high school. But they're also great for speeches and really any description you might use in life. In this workshop we'll go a little deeper than being tested on which one uses "like" or "as" and which doesn't. We'll talk about what they bring to a description and voice in our work. How do the choices we make in our metaphors affect the development of the “character” in the poem and their motivation? We will discuss how making our metaphors more effective helps us communicate with and connect to those around us. And also, they're fun to play with and useful, too, beyond just poetry.

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MATT MASON is the Nebraska State Poet and Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective. He runs poetry programming for the State Department, working in Nepal, Romania, Botswana and Belarus. Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and the author of "Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know"  and "The Baby That Ate Cincinnati."

Saturday, April 9th 10:00a CST

How do we interrogate meanness, retribution, and anger in our poems? How do we turn rage into light and heat? This virtual discussion will investigate how we can project our unflinching humanity on the page while remaining likable. We’ll explore various poets who manage to get away with risky confessions, potentially volatile statements, and controversial revelations, all the while asking ourselves, what keeps us as distant readers engaged? When are we turned off? Is there a way we can ethically invoke shock, discomfort, AND compassion toward ourselves, our subjects, and our readers? The last half hour of class will then be devoted to creating our own ethical “mean-person” on the page through a series of guided writing prompts. We’ll have a wonderful time! 

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MARIA NAZOS' poetry, essays, and translations are published in The New Yorker, American Life in Poetry, Cherry Tree, Birmingham Review, North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Florida Review, Rosebud, TriQuarterly, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. She served for several years as the editorial assistant for the former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser and his nationally syndicated newspaper column.

Her work has been widely anthologized, including appearing in What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump, edited by Martín Espada (2020 Northwestern University Press) and Nasty Women: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, edited by  Grace Bauer and Julie Kane (2016, Lost Horse Press.)

A Pushcart nominee, Maria is the author of A Hymn That Meanders (2011 Wising Up Press) and the chapbook Still Life (2016 Dancing Girl Press). Maria has received scholarships and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Kimmel Harding Nelson Foundation, the University of Nebraska, where she took her PhD in Creative Writing, and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives with two crazy cats and a patient husband in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Saturday, March 12th 10:00a CST

If you were like me as a child, you thought that if the wind blew just hard enough and if you held your arms out strong at just the right angle, you would be able to fly.  You knew your body for the wonders and possibilities of it!  In this workshop, we imagine the moment of first identifying our belly buttons.  We reclaim what others may have teased - a curved back, a lisp, a differently shaped nail - as beautiful.  We are beautiful and worthy of delight. We will explore how our unique qualities are natural and in tune with the miraculous mundane of the natural world. This is a cross-genre workshop in which we will use various experimental techniques to shake loose and play, drawing on readings from writers like Bettina Judd, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Laurie Ann Guerrero among others.  Movement based meditation, online magnet poetry, random word generators, collage techniques, and more will lead you into a new seeing and love of the self. 

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DR. RAINA J. LEÓN is an Afro-Latina writer and author of Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self (Alley Cat Books, 2019) as well as four other poetry books. She is a full professor of English Education at Saint Mary’s College of California and founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online journal of Latinx arts. Her fourth book of poetry, "black god mother this body," is forthcoming from Black Freighter Press in 2022. She is currently working on a hybrid manuscript that explores black feminism, mothering, and resistance in and to the academy.

Raina received her BA in Journalism from Pennsylvania State University (2003), MA in Teaching of English from Teachers College Columbia University (2004), MA in Educational Leadership from Framingham State University (2014) and PhD in Education under the Culture, Curriculum and Change strand at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (2010). She recently completed her MFA in Poetry at Saint Mary’s College of California (2016).

She has received fellowships and residencies with the Obsidian Foundation, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and Ragdale, among others. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, and Macondo.

Saturday, January 22nd, 10:00a CST

As artists, our most foundational tools can be the ones most difficult to use. Case in point: the poetic line. Together, we will conduct experiments in poetic lineation to determine the range of powerful ways lineation changes a poem. This interactive, anti-racist craft session is designed for poets of all skill levels, experiences, and poetic goals. 

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FREESIA McKEE (she/her) writes poetry, prose, and genres in-between. She’s the essays editor at South Florida Poetry Journal, a regular contributor to the Ploughshares blog, and teaches virtual writing classes to students all over the country from her home in Macomb, Illinois. Freesia’s work has appeared in Flyway, Bone Bouquet, So to Speak, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, CALYX, About Place Journal, and the Ms. Magazine Blog. Her poetry chapbook How Distant the City was published by Headmistress Press.

Saturday, October 9th 10:00a CST

Join Sharon in learning about spoken word and the art of the slam poem as we explore what spoken word is, what we gain from it, and how we can amplify our written work through audible and visual performance. 

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Sharon Nicole Carr has experience with spoken word from both performing in, and now aiding in running the Wayne State College Spring and Fall Poetry Slams. She is also an adjunct professor of editing for publication, as well as composition at Wayne State College. She is a freelance editor and layout designer for the WSC Press at Wayne State. In her spare time, Sharon creates artwork, creative writing, and zines.

Saturday, June 26th 10:00a CST

As poet Mark Van Doren (my husband’s grandfather) once said: “The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” We will spend the morning working together to discover our poetic voices and nurture their development. Using in-class prompts, we will explore how voice emerges and creates the distinctive character that makes our poems unique. This session should be fruitful for those new to writing poetry as well as seasoned poets. We’ll draw upon the wonderful resource of a constructive group setting to find out how others hear us and how we can best hear ourselves.

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Sally Van Doren is an American poet and artist.  She has published three collections of poetry, Promise (LSU Press 2017), Possessive (2012) and Sex at Noon Taxes (2008) which received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American poets. A graduate of Princeton University (BA) and University of Missouri-St. Louis (MFA), she has taught creative writing at the 92nd Street Y, Washington University in St. Louis, the St. Louis Public Schools and the St. Louis County Juvenile Detention Center.

Saturday, March 6th 2:00p CST

Although it's often thought of as work, revision simply means re-imagining what you've written. How playful, to separate yourself - the artist - from your art and take it somewhere new.

We'll discuss using space left in the margins for observation, reflection and experimentation. Afterward, I hope you'll want to return to some of your pieces, inspired to see them through a new lens and shape them into something even more impactful.

Holly is a graduate of the MFA Program at the University of Nebraska where she co-created its first ever fraternity consisting of a handful of emerging writers she is happy to share writing lives with. She works a predictable day job and afternoons as a slam poetry coach.

Saturday, April 5, 10:00a CDT

In an era defined by turmoil, poetry of witness is newly defined by resistance. Although anger is culturally maligned as immature, reactionary, hysterical, and easily dismissed by the structures that be, what connects us to seemingly insurmountable forces of oppression is our fury in the face of indignity.

     In this workshop, participants will work in the lineage of poetry of witness, considering the evolution and contemporary iteration of the response poem. Together, we will work with, not through, righteous indignation at the state of the world. This is not fine. Let’s whine about it. 

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RAENA SHIRALI is the author of two collections of poetry. Her first book, GILT, was released by YesYes Books in 2017 and won the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Published by Black Lawrence Press in October 2022, her second book, summonings, won the 2021 Hudson Prize and was shortlisted for the 2022 Julie Suk Award.

     Winner of a Pushcart Prize & a former Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University, Shirali is also the recipient of prizes and honors from VIDA, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, & Cosmonauts Avenue.

     Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, The Nation, The Rumpus, & elsewhere.

     Formerly Co-Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine, Shirali now serves as Faculty Advisor for Folio—a literary magazine dedicated to publishing works by undergraduate students at the national level.

     She holds an MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University and is an Associate Professor of English at Holy Family University.​

Saturday, February 22, 10:00a CDT

In this workshop, we'll explore how hybrid poetry serves as a powerful tool for self-exploration and expression.

     By engaging with the fluid and transformative nature of hybrid forms, we’ll delve into how our identities, shaped by the intersections of various influences, can be authentically reflected in our writing.
We will examine how hybrid poems, which blend elements of narrative, memoir, and cultural commentary, allow us to navigate the complexities of our inner and outer worlds.

     Participants will have the opportunity to create works that capture the richness of their experiences, exploring themes of identity, place, and the self in all its dimensions.
     This workshop invites writers to move beyond traditional forms, using hybrid poetry as a way to express the multifaceted nature of their authentic selves.

     Whether you’re experienced in poetry or new to this form, this workshop will provide a supportive space to explore the connections between our lived experiences and our creative expressions.

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MK CHAVEZ is a writer and educator whose work explores mixed-race identity, social justice, environmental resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual, and the creative process. 
     As founder of the Ouroboros Writing Lab, MK Chavez provides a nurturing space for writers to grow. The Lab offers workshops designed to expand creative boundaries and individual and group creative coaching. 
     Chavez’s work is recognized with the Pen Josephine Miles Award, San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award, and the Ruth Weiss Maverick Award. Chavez’s publications include Dear Animal, Mothermorphosis, the lyric essay chapbook A Brief History of the Selfie, and Virgin Eyes. Recent work can be found as part of the art installation Manifest Differently.​

Tuesday, January 7, 6:30p CST

Carolina Hotchandani is the author of The Book Eaters, 2023 Perugia Press Prize Winner, which was one of the ten debut poetry books featured in Poets & Writers Magazine’s 2024 debut poets issue and winner of the Nebraska Book Prize in the Poetry Honor category.

Hotchandani’s poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, AGNI, Beloit Poetry Journal, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and various other journals.

She is a Goodrich Assistant Professor of English in Omaha, Nebraska, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

Tuesday, November 5th 6:30p CST

Kassandra Montag grew up in rural Nebraska and now lives in Omaha with her husband and two sons. She holds a master’s degree in English Literature and her award-winning poetry and short fiction has appeared in journals and anthologies, including Midwestern Gothic, Nebraska Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and Mystery Weekly Magazine.

     In 2021, she won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. She is the author of a poetry collection "Chorus of the Underground Sea" and two novels "After the Flood" and "Those Who Return". Her work has been published in fifteen languages and has been optioned for film. ​

Tuesday, October 1st 6:30p CST

Jon Volkmer grew up Nebraska City. He holds a MA in Creative Writing from Denver University, and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

     His 2006 poetry collection "The Art of Country Grain Elevators" (Bottom Dog Press, with photography by Bruce Selyem) contains reflections of his youth, and especially of his father’s grain elevator business.

     His other books include the newly published novel "Brave in Season" (Sunbury Press 2023), a travel memoir, "Eating Europe" (Parlor Press 2006) and a YA biography of Roberto Clemente (Townsend, 2008).

     His poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Parnassus, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Worcester Review, and other venues.

     He is professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania.

Saturday August 24th 10:00a CDT

Who are we? Who are we told we are? Who do we know ourselves to be? 

     This workshop will explore how identity—imagined, imposed, and re-imagined—is utilized in poetics to communicate and construct objective and subjective reality. Through close examination of language, structure, form and other devices used within selected poems, workshop participants will become familiar with approaches to this craft that focus on powerfully probing and defining identity, in ways that empower them and accurately reflect the themes or experiences they are exploring in their writing.  

     To that end, a series of writing prompts will be used so that participants may generate poems from different perspectives in order to move closer to the expression of their essential/hidden selves in their writing. 

     We will also tackle basic elements of poetry and discuss workshop poems using select poetic forms.

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KEISHA-GAYE ANDERSON is a Jamaican-born poet, writer, and visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her poetry books include: Gathering the Waters (Jamii Publishing 2014) Everything Is Necessary (Willow Books 2019) and A Spell for Living (Agape 2020), which received the Editors’ Choice recognition for the Numinous Orisons, Luminous Origin Literary Award.

     Her poetry, fiction, and essays have been widely published in Kweli Literary Journal, Small Axe Salon, Interviewing the Caribbean, Renaissance Noire, The Caribbean Writer, The Killens Review of Arts and Letters, Mosaic Literary Magazine, African Voices Magazine, The Langston Hughes Review, Streetnotes: Cross-Cultural Poetics, Caribbean in Transit Arts Journal, The Mom Egg Review, and others.

     She is a graduate of the Syracuse University Newhouse School and College of Arts and Sciences and hold an M.F.A. in creative writing from The City College, CUNY.​

Tuesday, June 2nd 6:30p CST

Bonnie Johnson-Bartee is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, "Bildungsroman 38" (2004) and "Named, but Unknown" (2006), and is the editor of Teachers College: Essays on the Art of Education (WSC Press, 2007), and her latest book, "Cord Blood" (Sandhills Press 2022) won a 2023 Nebraska Book Award. Her work can be found in Nebraska Life, Words Like Rain (WSC Press, 2005) and editions of Voices Out of Nowhere and Judas Goat. 

     She teaches creative writing and literature courses at Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska, and at Northeast Community College in Norfolk, Nebraska, where she also serves as the coordinator of the Visiting Writers Series and is the faculty editor of Northeast Community College’s annual Voices Out of Nowhere.​

Saturday May 18th 10:00a CDT

Too often, poets segment our genre into "traditional page poetry" and "modern spoken word poetry," believing we are one or the other. This creates a divide and only grows the disconnect between page and stage poets. Join Kelsey Bigelow, a poet living in the spectrum between both styles, as she guides us through how to bridge this gap and learn how each style informs the other. 

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KELSEY BIGELOW is a spoken word and page poet based in Des Moines. In her work, she molds incredibly specific emotions into something human, digestible, and cathartic.

     She released her chapbook, "Sprig of Lilac," in 2018 and released her spoken word album, Depression Holders and Secret Keepers, in 2021.

     Her work is published in or forthcoming with Central Avenue Publishing, Pile Press, Lyrical Iowa, Backchannels Journal, Spirit Lake Review, and elsewhere, and she is a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee.

     She's the founder and leader of the Des Moines Poetry Workshop, the chair for the Iowa Poetry Association Poetry Slam, the co-tournament director for the BlackBerry Peach National Poetry Slam, and more. Get to know Kelsey through her website.

Tuesday, April 2nd 6:30p CST

Katie Schmid is a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in creative writing for 2023. Her debut book, "Nowhere," was released from the University of New Mexico Press. She's currently an Assistant Professor of English at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania.

     She received her graduate degree from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and misses Lincoln and, particularly, Bánhwich Café, very dearly.

Saturday, February 24th 10:00 CST

To write a nature a poem is to grieve nature. We already have poems that capture the beauty of nature and how it once was. The importance of capturing nature today is to see it as it is and how it might one day be.

     Naturally, we must move away from the traditional pastoral that romanticizes nature to some perversion of it as only we can experience, feel, and understand.

In this workshop, we will explore the contemporary pastoral from contemporary writers to see how the past and the present blend so well that it captures, possibly, a bleakness moving forward into some stark future only we can imagine.

     At the end of the workshop, we will meditate on our own relationship with nature as we’ve moved through time. We will sit and write from an imagined future that pulls from our current experiences. Then, we’ll share our work. We’ll end the workshop with some time for questions.

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TYLER MICHAEL JACOBS is the author of "Building Brownville" (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022). His words have appeared in Variant Literature, Plainsongs, Pidgeonholes, Sierra Nevada Review, Thin Air Magazine, White Wall Review, Funicular Magazine, and elsewhere. His poems have also been featured on Nebraska Public Media’s Friday LIVE!

     He is a second-year poetry MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University where he serves as an assistant editor and Blog Co-Editor for Mid-American Review.

Tuesday, January 2nd 6:30p CST

Cat Dixon is the author of "What Happens in Nebraska," "Eva," and "Too Heavy to Carry"  (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2022, 2016, 2014), and the chapbooks "The Book of Levinson" and "Our End Has Brought the Spring" (Finishing Line Press, 2017, 2015), and "Table for Two" (Poet's Haven, 2019).

     Her newest chapbook, "Dispatches from the Unfillable Sinkhole," was released from Alien Buddha Press last summer. Cat is a poetry editor with The Good Life Review and an adjunct instructor at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Learn more on her website.

Tuesday, November 7th, 6:30p CST

Lucy Adkins' poetry has been published in many journals including Poet Lore, Red Wheelbarrow, South Dakota Review and the anthologies Crazy Woman Creek, Women Write Resistance and the Poets Against the War anthology.

     Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart prize, and she has also co-authored two books of non-fiction, Writing in Community, recipient of an “Ippy” in the Independent Publishers Book Awards; and The Fire Inside.

Her poetry chapbook, Two-Toned Dress, was a winner of the 2019 Blue Light Press chapbook contest, as well as a Nebraska Book Award for Poetry.

Her first full-length poetry collection, A Crazy Little Thing is forthcoming from Wayne State College Press.

Tuesday, October 3rd, 6:30p CST

Stephanie A. Marcellus is a professor of English at Wayne State College. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Colorado State University and a PhD in Nineteenth-Century British Literature from The University of South Dakota.

     Her work has appeared in Plainsongs, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Alligator Juniper as well as in other journals and anthologies. Her chapbook, What Is Left Behind: Garden Elegies, was published by Finishing Line Press.

Saturday, August 26th 10:00a CST

The modern sonnet, a short, sweet, 14-ish lines of poetry, can be the perfect container for expression. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Diane Seuss writes, "The sonnet is an endlessly fluid, reimagined form. It has been hushed, lushed, fragmented, fogged, elated, flipped and freaked by everyone." While the traditional sonnet most of us learned in school is a rigid puzzle with many rules, the modern sonnet can be a brief adventure, an exploration with only a few rules--all which are made to be broken. In this generative workshop, we will dive into the beauty and intensity of the modern sonnet--looking at examples by Diane Seuss, Edna St Vincent Millay, Gerald Stern, and Lucille Clifton, to discover the ways breaking the bounds of the sonnet form can set us free.

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MEGHAN STERLING'S work has been published or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Rhino Poetry, Nelle, Colorado Review, Rattle, and many others, and has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes. Her debut poetry collection, These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books), came out in 2021 and was a Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize in Poetry. Her chapbook, Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions) her collection, Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) and her collection, View from a Borrowed Field, which won Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize, are forthcoming in 2023. She is program director at Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Read her work at meghansterling.com.

Tuesday, July 11th 6:30p CST

Lin Marshall Brummels grew up on a quiet farm at the edge of the Nebraska Sandhills. She now boards horses with a little help from family.

Brummels earned a Psychology BA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a MS in Rehabilitation Counseling from Syracuse University. Brummels is a Nebraska licensed mental health counselor in private practice.

Her poem “Jerry’s Hands” was selected as an Honorable Mention poem in the 2021 Nebraska Poetry Society’s poetry contest. She’s published poems in journals, magazines, and anthologies. Her poetry chapbooks are “Cottonwood Strong” and “Hard Times,” a 2016 Nebraska Book Award winner. Her 2021 full-length collection is “A Quilted Landscape.” 

Saturday, May 20th 10:00a CST

How do poets find entry points to their poems? Is it via the image, a poetic form, an idea, an emotion, or something less easily named? In this short class, I’ll offer my sense of how vastly different creative practices can be engaged to enlarge one’s poetic vision and articulation. The mind of haiku is not the mind of free verse, for instance, yet both minds can be beautifully activated through study and practice. We’ll traverse international terrain to discuss poems that I hope will inspire you to begin and begin and begin, but not always in the same way. . . . All levels of experience are welcome! 

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KATIE FORD is the author of four books of poems, Deposition, Colosseum, Blood Lyrics, and If You Have to Go, all published by Graywolf Press. Blood Lyrics was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize and the Rilke Prize. Colosseum was named among the “Best Books of 2008” by Publishers Weekly and the Virginia Quarterly Review.

She completed graduate work in world religions, theology, and poetry at Harvard University and received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has taught poetry and creative writing for over 20 years around the country. She is currently a Professor of Creative Writing and lives in South Pasadena with her daughter.​

Tuesday, April 4th 6:30p CST

Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize.

     Her work has appeared in over 25 journals and anthologies including The Decadent Review, Heartwood Literary, Gyroscope Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere and her debut poetry collection, Unsuspecting Cinderella, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022.

     Shyla lives in Omaha with her husband, children, and four cats and currently splits her time between managing a healthy household and running a nonprofit literary journal, The Good Life Review.

     Her full bio and an account of her published work are available at shylashehan.com.

Saturday, February 18th 10:00a CST

The image is typically treated as one tool among many in the poet’s toolbox. You use an image, to make a point, to ornament an idea. But images are really the building blocks of poetry—not an ornament, but the structure itself. In this class, we’ll study the work of Jenny Xie, a poet who shows how powerful images can be, when they stand on their own, asking us to find connections between them; or, alternately, to pause on each image, savoring its particular pungency. And we’ll talk about practical strategies for putting the image at the center of our own writing. What kind of poem emerges when your images are allowed to assemble into unpredictable, unexpected constellations, when your images are magnetized by each other?

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TOBY ALTMAN is the author of two books, Discipline Park (Wendy’s Subway, 2022) and Arcadia, Indiana (Plays Inverse, 2017). He recently received a 2021 Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has held residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and MacDowell, where he was the 2020 Stephanie and Robert Olmstead Fellow. His poems can be found in Gulf Coast, jubilat, Lana Turner, and other journals and anthologies; his articles and essays can or will be found in Contemporary Literature, English Literary History, and Jacket2. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD in English from Northwestern University. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Beloit College.

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Tuesday, January 3rd 6:30p CST

Ryan Boyland is a writer, wanderer, medical student, and amateur astronomer currently based out of Omaha, Nebraska, where his love for both science and poetry motivates him to combine the two at every opportunity.   

     His work addresses issues of identity, love, and death. And stars. Because they’re cool. His goal through his performance is to touch minds and hearts around the world and considers it a victory every time he can do so.

     Ryan and his work have been featured on Button Poetry, Poets and Writers, Nebraska Public Media, through Larksong Writers’ Place, in Omaha Magazine, The Cookout Literary Journal, and can be found on SoundCloud, Facebook, and YouTube.

     When not writing, Ryan enjoys listening to music, stargazing, and being Black, mixed in with the occasional intense discussion regarding the validity of the Star Wars prequels.

Saturday, November 12th 10:00a CST

Join us for a virtual gathering of fellow poets of all levels that inspires and motives each other toward our personal writing goals. Think of this as your bi-monthly jolt of confidence for hitting your writing goals mixed in with a little fun. Free and open to all members.

Saturday, October 1st 10:00a CST

Once the venue of “chap men” who sold 8-12 page “penny” books on 16th century streets, chapbooks are no longer just the poor (wo)man poet’s stapled “wanna-be” book.  While chapbooks do serve as important segues for young poets into first book publishing, they also offer established poets opportunities for focused, impassioned explorations into familial and cultural landscapes. There are distinct and proven routes to creating fully realized and beautifully-wrought chapbooks. We’ll look at how three women poets, winners of 2021 chapbook contests, shaped and focused their chapbook to illuminate issues of gender, sexual identity, and culture: Elizabeth Metzger, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry and poetry editor for the LA Review of Books, in her chapbook, Bed Poems, and Maura Stanton, winner of the Yale Series for Younger Poets, in her chapbook, Interiors, and SJ Sindu, author of two novels and previous chapbooks, in Dominant Genes. Ultimately, whether you are a poet with a handful of poems to work with or you simply have a vision for a future chapbook, you will be given a chance to leave this workshop with the seeds for a new and cohesive chapbook.  

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A longtime educator and arts advocate, KATHRYN WINOGRAD is the author of seven books, including Air Into Breath, an alternative for the Yale Series for Younger Poets and a Colorado Book Award Winner, and Slow Arow: Unearthing the Frail Children, awarded a Bronze Medal in Essay for the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards.   Flying Beneath the Dog Star Poems from a Pandemic, released in 2022, is a semi-finalist for the Finishing Line Press' 2021 Open Chapbook Contest.  Her first collection of essays, Phantom Canyon: Essays of Reclamation, was a Foreword Indies Book of the Year Finalist. Her essays have been noted in Best American Essays, and published in many journals including Terrain.org (forthcoming),Fourth Genre, Hotel Amerika, River Teeth, The Florida Review, Essay Daily, and The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction, 6th edition. Her poetry has been published in places as diverse as The New Yorker and Cricket Magazine and received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and a Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XXXVIII . Currently an editor for Humble Essayist Press, Winograd was a founding faculty member for the Ashland University MFA and now teaches poetry and creative nonfiction for Regis University’s Mile High MFA. She received her Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Denver and a M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Iowa. 

Saturday, September 10th 10:00a CST

In this workshop, we will examine how loss, sorrow and rituals of mourning can lead to revelations that we otherwise could not reach. We will examine work by Penelope Cray and Natasha Trethewey, and then through a series of exercises, write work that draws upon your own revelations that leads to deeper truths, as you delve deep into the disquiet. 

Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, ROSEBUD BEN-ONI is the winner of 2019 Alice James Award for If This Is the Age We End Discovery (March 2021), which received a Starred Review in Booklist and was a Finalist for the 2021 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She is also the author of turn around, BRXGHT XYXS (Get Fresh Books, 2019) and the chapbook 20 Atomic Sonnets, which appears online in Black Warrior Review (2020) and is part of a larger future project called The Atomic Sonnets, which she began in 2019, in honor of the Periodic Table’s 150th Birthday. She has received fellowships and grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, City Artists Corps, CantoMundo and Queens Council on the Arts. Her work appears in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Poetry Society of America (PSA), The Poetry Review (UK), Poetry Wales, Tin House, Guernica, Electric Literature, Waxwing, among others. In 2017, her poem "Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark" was commissioned by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in NYC and published by The Kenyon Review Online. Recently, her poem “Dancing with Kiko on the Moon” was featured in Tracy K. Smith’s The Slowdown.

Tuesday, August 2nd, 6:30p CST

Scott Abels is the author of the chapbooks "A State of The Union Speech" (Beard of Bees Press, 2015) and "Nebraska Fantastic" (Beard of Bees Press, 2012), as well as the full-length books "Rambo Goes to Idaho" (BlazeVox, 2011) and "New City" (BlazeVox, 2015).

     He is an instructor for Foundational English and English as a Second Language. Bachelor of English Literature, Chadron State College; MFA in Creative Writing (poetry emphasis), Boise State University.

Saturday, June 18th, 10:00a CST

The turn—sometimes called the swerve, the twist, the pivot, or in a sonnet, the volta—is a significant shift in rhetorical and/or dramatic trajectory in a poem. It’s that moment of acceleration when the poem careens around a blind curve then lifts off the page, rocketing us into another dimension. It is, says poet-novelist Kim Addonizio, “the leap from one synapse to another, one thought to a further thought, one level of understanding or questioning to being in the presence of the mystery. “

In this workshop, we’ll explore the power of the turn with an emphasis on structure, rather than form or genre. We’ll study specific poetic structures—such as elegiac, emblematic, and the mid-course turn—as a means to writing poems that do indeed turn, leap, and swerve, in short, poems that move/us. A poem that moves us, is a poem that can teach and enlighten us. We’ll read example poems that utilize these structures and discuss how the structure amplifies the poet’s message. Then, we’ll write together and share our results. Each participant will receive a link to the poems studied during the workshop as well as a list of other poems to explore. Additionally, participants are invited to send poems written during the workshop to the facilitator for individual feedback within one month of the workshop.

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KIM NORIEGA is the author of "Name Me", the title poem of which was a finalist for the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in textbooks, journals, and anthologies including: American Life in Poetry, Paris-Atlantic, Split Lip, and The Tishman Review. She was the winner of San Miguel Literary Sala’s Flash Nonfiction Prize, a finalist for the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize, and one of 30 poets selected to collaborate with 30 film artists as a part of the 2018 Visible Poetry Project.

Kim recently retired from a 30-year career with San Diego Public Library as the head of its family literacy program. She is a Teaching Artist and Writing Mentor with the Poetry Barn and President of the Board of Directors for the nonprofit, AIM Higher. She is a certified facilitator of the Creative Regeneration Process and an expert consultant in Family Literacy with the Pacific Library Partnership.

Kim is passionate about writing, teaching, wolf recovery, and the well being of feral cats. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Ernie, and—you guessed it—a clowder of cats. For more about Kim’s work and her offerings visit kimnoriega.com.

Tuesday, May 3rd, 6:30p CST

Adrienne Christian is the author of three poetry collections: "Worn", "A Proper Lover", and "12023 Woodmont Avenue" (2013).

     Common themes in her work are family, love, and African-American life. Adrienne's poetry, prose, and photographs have been featured in Prairie Schooner, Hayden's Ferry Review, Phoebe, CALYX, Today's Black Woman, Jolie, The Los Angeles Review, and dozens of others.

     In 2020, she earned her PhD in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska. In 2011, she earned her MFA in English with a concentration in Contemporary Poetics from Pacific University. And In 2001, she earned her BA in English with a concentration in 19th Century British Literature from the University of Michigan.

     In 2020, Adrienne was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and won the Common Ground poetry award. In 2016, she was a finalist for the Rita Dove International Poetry Award. In 2007, she won the University of Michigan's Five Under Five Ten Young Alumni Recognition Award.

Tuesday, April 5th 6:30p CTS

James Solheim will read from a wide range of his works and show how his poetry for adults is interwoven into his writing for children.

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James Solheim’s books circle the globe and travel through centuries.  They explore the most amazing foods on earth, explain Santa’s sleigh technology, and tell the stories of history through our grandmas.

     First published by Simon & Schuster, "It’s Disgusting—and We Ate It" has been a hit for Scholastic Book Clubs, Scholastic Book Fairs, Junior Library Guild, and beyond—right up to the current Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Reading Program used in schools to inspire love of learning.

     The Wall Street Journal and PBS included "It’s Disgusting—and We Ate It" in their lists of best books for getting boys to read.  The Washington Post included it on its list of best books for summer reading.  It was an American Bookseller Pick of the Lists and a Blue Ribbon Book of The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books.

     James Solheim’s books have been a big part of charity.  His picture book "Born Yesterday" from Philomel/Penguin Random House was a multi-year choice of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, with 446,000 copies donated to children across the U.S. and beyond.  A Junior Library Guild selection, it received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, where it was Big Picture Book of the Month and chosen as one of the ten best picture books of the year.  "Born Yesterday" was a Children’s Choice book for the CBC and International Literacy Association—this time with children themselves choosing it as a favorite.

     His 2021 book from HarperCollins, "Grandmas Are Greater Than Great", illustrated by New York Times bestselling artist Derek Desierto, explores history through twelve generations of grandmotherly love.  And James illustrated his new book himself—"Eat Your Woolly Mammoths! (Two Million Years of the World's Most Amazing Food Facts, from the Stone Age to the Future)"—available now at your independent bookstore or at jamessolheim.com.

     His poetry for adults has been published in Poetry, The Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, and The Pushcart Prize, and his long poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Chicago Review, and Northwest Review, among other important magazines.

Tuesday, March 1st, 6:30p CST

Tryphena Yeboah is the author of the chapbook "A Mouthful of Home", selected by the New-Generation African Poets series.

Her stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine and Commonwealth Writers, among others. She is from Ghana and currently lives in Lincoln, where she's a doctoral student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Tuesday, February 1st, 6:30p CST

Hilda Raz's work is widely recognized, and her influence can be felt—as a director, award judge, and contributor—in this country’s most prestigious poetry journals and contests. Her many poetry collections include "What Happens", "All Odd and Splendid, "Trans", "Divine Honors,” and last year, “List and Story,” followed by her Collected and New Poems called “Letter from a Place I’ve Never Been,” edited by Kwame Dawes, in 2021.  

     At the same time, the University of Nebraska Press republished all of her previous poetry collections.  She was the first Glenna Luschei Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies and editor of PRAIRIE SCHOONER and the founding editor of the Raz/Shumaker PS Poetry Prizes in Poetry and Short Fiction.  

     Now retired, she is the editor of the Mary Burritt Poetry Series for the University of New Mexico Press and poetry editor for Bosque Press.

Saturday, September 18th 10:00a CST

Every human being experiences universal, yet unique issues concerning their mental and physical state of wholeness. In this workshop we will explore how using poetry to tap into feelings surrounding our health can have enormous healing qualities. Close reading is an integral part of the workshop as is short prompted writing and discussion. I hope you will join me in exploring how poetry can be used as a powerful method in the healing properties of narrative medicine.

Wendy Hind, PhD/JD, uses poetry as a form of narrative medicine to understand and heal. Her chapbook “My Tattoos” will be available in August.  She is also the founder and curator of tiny poetry project – narrative medicine for the soul. #tinypoetryproject and tinypoetryproject.com.

Saturday, May 1st 10:00a CST

Whether your practice is to write a poem every day, once a week, or to write only when the poem stirs inside of you, there is always the question of “how to begin.” In this workshop we’ll explore several perspectives on the topic of poem ‘openings’ and experiment with a few approaches that go beyond using basic prompts to see what might help the words flow onto the page.

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Shyla is the Managing Editor for The Good Life Review. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Nebraska where she leveled-up her poetry game and discovered that the writing life has more to offer than just a way to cope with the chaos of the Universe.

Saturday, February 20th 10:00a CST

February brings hints of spring and what better time to play with Sonnets.  Improve your sonnet skills, or write your first one. Join us as Dr. Stephanie Marcellus shares some tips and tricks on writing sonnets. 

Dr. Stephanie Marcellus teaches creative writing at Wayne State College and is a 2019 recipient of the Balsley Whitmore Award for recognition in teaching.

Tuesday, april 1, 6:30p CST

Steve Langan lived in Omaha for many years and now he lives in Maine. He graduated from the University of Nebraska Omaha and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received the James Michener Postgraduate Fellowship.

Langan formed Seven Doctors Project (7DP), an ongoing creative writing workshop designed for mid-career physicians who were willing to claim job burnout and dissatisfaction, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2008. He returned to his alma mater in 2019 to help form and lead UNO's Major in Medical Humanities. He currently teaches classes at Baylor University Medical Humanities.

Langan's poems are in a variety of journals, including Columbia, Cutbank, Diagram, DoubleTake, Fence, Flyway, MAKE, Meridian, Pool, Shade, Slope, Sweet, Make, Verse, and Witness. His books are Freezing, Notes on Exile & Other Poems, Meet Me at the Happy Bar, What It Looks Like, How It Flies, and Bedtime Stories (Littoral Books, 2024)

Tuesday, February 4, 6:30p CST

Lisa Fay Coutley is the author of HOST (Wisconsin Poetry Series, 2024), tether (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), Errata (Southern Illinois University, 2015), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, In the Carnival of Breathing (BLP, 2011), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition, Small Girl: Micromemoirs (Harbor Editions, 2024), and she is the editor of In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (BLP, 2023).

Her poetry has been awarded an NEA Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Levis Prize, chosen by Dana Levin, and the 2021 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz. 

Recent prose & poetry appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Barrelhouse, Brevity, North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, and on The Slowdown. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry & CNF in the Writer’s Workshop at UNO.​

Saturday, December 14th, 10:00a CDT

In "The Archaeology of Knowledge," Michel Foucault writes, “The frontiers of a book are never clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous forms, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network.”

     In this generative writing class, we will begin with a word or phrase, line or lines from another book of poetry. After mapping out ideas, feelings, rhythms, syntaxes and words we associate with the line or lines we have brought in, we will start work on our own poems.

     (Throughout, we will engage in mini-breaks that can be incorporated into people’s everyday writing rituals in the future, to spur our creativity and collaboration as a workshop).

     The lines we begin with may be embedded in the poem we write, or turn out to serve as the seed, scaffold or prompt. The process of building a poem in conversation with other poets and poetry, is one that will hopefully prove to be a rewarding approach for you to take in your writing practice moving forward.

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JULIA GUEZ is a writer and translator based in the city of Houston. "The Certain Body" (Four Way Books, 2022) is her second collection of poetry, written while she was recovering from COVID in the spring of 2020. Guez holds degrees from Rice and Columbia.

     To date, she has received a handful of recognitions for her work, including the Discovery / Boston Review Poetry Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship and a translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

     Her work has appeared in POETRY, The Guardian, BOMB, Kenyon Review and The Brooklyn Rail. For the last decade, she has worked with Teach For America, New York; Guez has taught creative writing at NYU and Rutgers and in workshops across the country.

     With her wife, Elizabeth, she has three sons.​

Saturday, November 2nd, 10:00a CDT

As poet Mary Ruefle says, “I did not always know authors were ordinary people living ordinary lives.” What do we lose when we fail to celebrate — or worse, ignore! — the wondrous details of ordinary life?

     This generative workshop makes space for that celebration through conversation, example poems, and dedicated writing time with prompts to help capture the details of our own glorious dailiness.

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ERICA REID's debut collection "Ghost Man on Second" won the 2023 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published by Autumn House Press earlier this year. Erica’s poems appear in Rattle, Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and more. ericareidpoet.com​

Saturday September 7th 10:00a CDT

Every line of poetry is a star. In this class, we will be making constellations. We will lay out our stars into a shape that will guide readers / listeners to a deeper meaning the same way stars have guided ship captains through nights at sea.

     All constellations are extended metaphors. We will be going through the process of beginning and editing poems in ways that make our extended metaphors clear to audiences and easy to create.

     Our constellations will be made of stories and the people we hold close.

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JAVON RUSTIN is a poet, performer, and programmer; a writer of stories, stanzas, and software. He started competing in poetry slams after graduating from North Carolina A&T in 2013. Since then Javon has been a National Poetry Slam finalist and Regional Slam champion. He ranked 5th in the 2023 National Blackberry Peach Poetry Slam and has worked as a teaching artist for youth in D.C. and Dallas Public School Districts.

     He has been published in six anthologies and his performances can be found on Button Poetry, Write About Now, and All Def Poetry. Javon continues to compete with his poetry but always returns to his love of writing and speaking on topics such as mental health, Black joy, and diversity.​

Tuesday, August 5th 6:30p CST

Hannah Wilkinson is an independent poet writing in Omaha, NE. She has published two collections: "Unto the Breach" and "Half Agony, Half Hope."

     Poetry is her most essential form of self-expression and empowerment. Her words are a direct link to her passion and her pain and they have saved her life more than once. She hopes they can do some good for others as well. 

Saturday June 15th 10:00a CDT

In an influential 1988 essay, poet Gregory Orr identifies story, structure, music, and imagination as the four temperaments that define poets and their poetry. What is your poetic temperament?   

     In this class, we will explore Orr’s model, delving into his ideas about the interaction of finite temperaments (story, structure) and infinite temperaments (music, imagination).

     Reading poems by Julia Alvarez, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, Frank O’Hara, Dorothy Parker, James Wright, and others, we will observe how the four temperaments allow poets, in the words of Orr, “to forge language into the convincing unities we call poems.”

     This class is suitable for writers and readers alike. Poets will gain new insight into their own poetic temperament and how they can refine it to achieve their creative objectives. Readers will deepen their engagement with poetry by acquiring a new interpretive framework.

     A segment devoted to generative writing will allow writers and non-writers alike to explore their poetic temperament. 

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MICHAEL BRODER is the author of "Drug and Disease Free" (Indolent Books, 2016) and "This Life Now" (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry.

     His work has been published in Columbia Poetry Review, The American Poetry Review, The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and numerous others.

     He holds a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from New York University, and a PhD in classics from The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Tuesday, May 7th 6:30p CST

J. V. Brummels is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, editor and rancher.  His collection, "Book of Grass" was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry and his collection "Cheyenne Line and Other Poems" was selected as one of 150 significant books by Nebraskans.

     His other collections include "City at War" and most recently "All the Live-Long Day." His work has been recognized with a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Elkhorn Prize and the Mildred Bennett Award for contributions to the state’s literature from the Nebraska Center for the Book.  
     J.V. recently retired after a long tenure at Wayne State College, he was also the publisher of Logan House and the founding editor of the WSC Press.

Saturday, March 9th 10:00a CST

When a poet steps to the microphone, truth on the tip of their tongue and vulnerability in their voice, you listen. But what writing techniques does a performance poet use to hook their audience? From the syntax of the first line, to the structure of the whole poem, spoken word artists have found multiple ways to keep the audience’s attention.
     You may be a master at creating images, a poet that can capture passion and pain, even a talented storyteller, but if you cannot hook your audience they won’t stick around long enough for you to prove it.
     This workshop, designed for novice and experienced poets, will focus on the hook by examining the spoken word artists that have found a way—in just a minute—to capture the attention of millions of viewers online. The artists include names such as Neil Hilborn, Javon Johnson, Sabrina Benaim, Blythe Bard, and many others.

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CALEB "THE NEGRO ARTIST" RAINEY

is an author, performer, and producer. His debut book, "Look, Black Boy," was awarded first prize in the North Street Book Prize, and his second book, "Heart Notes" was published in 2019.

     He released two spoken word albums, a studio version of Look, Black Boy, and a performance album titled, Heart Notes Live!

     For three years in a row he was named Best Poet/Spoken Word Performer in Cedar Rapids & Iowa City. He is the winner of several slams across the United States, has shared the stage with spoken word titans such as Siaara Freeman, Javon Johnson, Ebony Stewart, Anthony McPherson, and Patricia Smith. Videos of his performances can be found on his YouTube channel, Write About Now, and Button Poetry.

     When he is not writing and performing he is actively curating a community of spoken word poets in Iowa City through his high school program, IC Speaks, and producing events like the Mic Check Poetry Fest.

Tuesday, February 6th 6:30p CST

AA Monet is a poet, author, book publisher, editor, and space creator for emotions to freely and safely exist. AA Monet, or AAM, is a growing brand that seeks to inspire oneself to see their own uniqueness. With this vision in mind, the creator came up with the mantra: I AAM Enough. 

     AA Monet’s poetry book, Lost And Found, can be found in local stores in the Omaha area to include the Aframerican Bookstore and DUSK Goods & Gifts! She is open to partnerships and workshop opportunities via her email. 

After you RSVP, you will receive an email with the zoom link information on it.

Tuesday, December 5th 6:30p CST

Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and was Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective from 2009-2022. Through the US State Department, he has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus.

     Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council.

     His work can be found in The New York Times, on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry, and more. Mason's 4th book, At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros, was released by The Old Mill Press in 2022.

     Matt is based out of Omaha with his wife, the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and daughters Sophia and Lucia. Find more on his website. 

Saturday, November 4th 10:00a CST

There is a rich tradition of ecological and pastoral writing by queer authors. Despite this--or perhaps because of it--it can be hard to define just what makes nature writing or ecology "queer." How can "queer ecology" explore and trouble the definitions of "natural" and "unnatural"? How can queer ecology open up the way we understand our kinship and community with each other and with the natural world? How can we "queer" the way we think about ecology and the way all of life is connected?

In this class, we will explore these questions as we study pastoral and ecological poems by queer authors. We will discuss the many ways poets can "queer" ecology.

At the end of the class, we will practice writing some poems of our own that think about ecology in queer ways. Individuals of all identities are welcome and encouraged to join--we can all practice "queering" the way we think about ecology and the natural world! Beyond identity, queer can be a verb, an action, a mindset as we all consider the way our bodies and minds live in the web of ecological existence. Let's all practice some queer thinking together!

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KELLY WEBER (she/they) is the author of We Are Changed to Deer at the Broken Place (Tupelo Press, forthcoming December 2022) and You Bury the Birds in My Pelvis, winner of the 2022 Omnidawn First/Second Book Prize (forthcoming October 2023). She is the reviews editor for Seneca Review. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in a Best American Poetry Author Spotlight, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Southeast Review, Salamander, The Journal, Passages North, Foglifter, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University and lives with two rescue cats. More of their work can be found at kellymweber.com.

Annual Membership $35

Saturday, September 22nd 10:00a CST

The sestina is a 12th Century French form of poem that's 39 lines long. Yes, that one-sentence description raises red flags, doesn't it? Many fear it. But the world is falling apart anyway, before we all die, let's just do it, let us write a damn sestina.

We'll talk about more recently-written sestinas to get familiar with the form, then plot our ascent using maps, graphs, depth charts, and sorcery (the first three are there as a tongue-in-cheek lie, the 4th, though, is the truth).

ARE YOU WITH ME!?

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MATT MASON is the Nebraska State Poet and was Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective from 2009-2022. Through the US State Department, he has run workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus.

Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council.

His work can be found in The New York Times, on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry, and more. Mason's 4th book, At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros, was released by The Old Mill Press in 2022.

Matt is based out of Omaha with his wife, the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and daughters Sophia and Lucia. Find more at: https://matt.midverse.com/

Tuesday, August 1st 6:30p CST

Kelly Weber (she/they) is the author of We Are Changed to Deer at the Broken Place (Tupelo Press, forthcoming December 2022) and You Bury the Birds in My Pelvis, winner of the 2022 Omnidawn First/Second Book Prize (forthcoming October 2023). 

     She is the reviews editor for Seneca Review. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in a Best American Poetry Author Spotlight, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Southeast Review, Salamander, The Journal, Passages North, Foglifter, and elsewhere. 

     She is a native Nebraskan and holds an MFA from Colorado State University and lives with two rescue cats. More of their work can be found at kellymweber.com.

Saturday, June 10th 10:00a CST

The poetic you can be notoriously slippery—pointing to speaker, reader, or beloved; to “one" or the other. Combine this slipperiness with a readiness to change (and be changed by) the poem's voice and syntax, and the second person becomes a powerful tool for poets interested in the speaker's relationships with reader, self, and other. Together we'll read, write, and experiment, exploring the many possibilities (and a few pitfalls) of the second person. 

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LISA GLUSKIN STONESTREET is the author of The Greenhouse (Frost Place Prize) and Tulips, Water, Ash (Morse Poetry Prize). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Plume, Zyzzyva, and Kenyon Review and anthologies including Nasty Women Poets and The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she reads, writes, edits, teaches, and works one on one with writers from her backyard Poetry Shack. She has terrible handwriting but is surprisingly good at math. lisagluskinstonestreet.com

Saturday, April 15th 10:00a CST

Have you ever thought about what it was like to live as a brick? Or Sweeney Todd? Or maybe even Superman? From the Academy of American Poets, persona poems are poems in which the poet speaks through an assumed voice, creating a distance between the writer and speaker that can result in finding  new truths previously left unconsidered.

In this workshop, we will be using the persona poem to convey thoughts, feelings, and ideas through the voice of a character of the author's choosing. In a phrase, telling our own stories through a perspective other than our own--finding our voice in another's mouth.

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RYAN BOYLAND is a writer, wanderer, medical student, and amateur astronomer currently based out of Omaha, Nebraska, where his love for both science and poetry motivates him to combine the two at every opportunity.   

His work addresses issues of identity, love, and death. And stars. Because they’re cool. His goal through his performance is to touch minds and hearts around the world and considers it a victory every time he can do so.

Ryan and his work have been featured on Button Poetry, Poets and Writers, Nebraska Public Media, through Larksong Writers’ Place, in Omaha Magazine, The Cookout Literary Journal, and can be found on SoundCloud, Facebook, and YouTube.

When not writing, Ryan enjoys listening to music, stargazing, and being Black, mixed in with the occasional intense discussion regarding the validity of the Star Wars prequels.

Saturday, March 18th 10:00a CST

Modeled after The Writing Workshop KC, founded by Poet Jen Harris, Defying the Internal Censor will involve prompt based writing and sharing of these “sh*tty first drafts.” For the novice and professional alike, this writing workshop is about making time for your creative practice, building confidence in your inherent creative talents, expanding your experience, building a supportive and authentic community and, of course, defying the internal censor. By attending you can expect:

- A vulnerability and authenticity triathlon - This is not a critique workshop

- Positive feedback only

Take a chance. All will be revealed upon attendance.

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JEN HARRIS is a sought-after performance artist and co-host of Confessing Animals Podcast, interviewing seasoned and fresh-faced artists of every genre to discuss how to make creativity work within the complexities and challenges of adult life. She is the founder and host of The Writing Workshop KC, whose mission is to nurture creative curiosity and inspire confidence within prompt-based writing workshops.

Jen is particularly passionate about reaching queer people and those struggling to thrive within the multitude of oppressive systems. From dive bars to performance halls worldwide, reaching audiences in the thousands from ages 10-80, Jen cultivates passion and emboldens the aspirational through her work.

She is inspired to eradicate the toxic mythology of the hapless creative, offering her students the opportunity to create, develop, edit and perform their work before engaged, paying audiences, all the while seeking validity in the process and not the outcome.

Jen challenges her students to defy the internal censor, revive or discover the joy of creating and offer themselves the gift of fulfillment through art.

Featured on NPR, TEDx, Button Poetry & Write About Now Poetry & Queer Eye, KC’s Best Poet 2021, Advocate Magazine’s Champions of Pride award 2021, Harris is the author of 3 books of poetry and the recipient of numerous accolades. ​

Tuesday, February 7th 6:30p CST

Amy Haddad is a poet, nurse and educator who taught in the health sciences at Creighton University where she is now a Professor Emerita. Her poetry and short stories have been published in several periodicals including the American Journal of Nursing, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, Bellevue Literary Review, Pulse, Persimmon Tree, Annals of Internal Medicine, Aji Magazine, DASH, and Oberon Poetry Magazine.

     Her first chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens” was published by Finishing Line Press in August, 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in March,  2022.

Tuesday, December 6th 6:30p CST

Michael Catherwood's awards include a Nebraska Arts Council Grant, Pushcart Nomination, The Holt Prize for Poetry, and Finalist for the Ruth Lily Prize.

     His newest book, "Near Misses," is forthcoming from WSC Press. His previous books are "Dare," "If You Turned Around Quickly," and "Projector" from Stephen F. Austin Press. He is former editor at The Backwaters Press and has been Associate Editor at Plainsongs since 1995.

     Recent poems have appeared in The Common, Pennsylvania English, I-70 Review, and Common Ground Review.   He’s a cancer survivor is recently retired and lives in Omaha with his wife Cindy.

Bi-Monthly on the 2nd & 4th

Wednesday 6:30p-7:30p

Join us for a virtual gathering of fellow poets of all levels that inspires and motives each other toward our personal writing goals. Think of this as your bi-monthly jolt of confidence for hitting your writing goals mixed in with a little fun. Free and open to all members.

Thursday, October 13th, 6:30p CST

Writers are often plagued with doubt. We worry that we are not good enough or don’t have anything important to say. We allow our fear to keep us from doing what we love. The cure to our anxiety is as simple as putting pen to paper. But we procrastinate and let our doubt rule our art.

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In this group, we will set individual writing goals and work toward achieving them. We will motivate, encourage, and inspire one another to keep putting pen to paper and reach our goals. We will check in and meet regularly, at times that will be determined at this first meeting.

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Join us and discover how much you can accomplish by the year’s end.

Tuesday, September 6th, 6:30p CST

P. Ivan Young is the Author of "Smell of Salt", "Ghost of Rain" and "A Shape in the Waves". His poem "The Bone Farmer" was nominated for the 2021 Pushcart Prize by The Minnesota Review.

     His work has been featured in American Life in Poetry and published in North American Review, RHINO, Cider Press Review, Passages North, Cream City Review, and Fourteen Hills, among others.

     He holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska and currently works as a communications coordinator for Nebraska Children and Families Foundation. He lives in Omaha with his wife and two children.

Saturday, July 9th, 10:00a CST

Poets are observers. One way to explore your observations and ideas is through a writing journal. In this workshop, we'll cover the basics of journaling for poets, not just as a method of processing and keeping track of your thoughts, but as a method of discovering the seeds of poems that spark a revelation in yourself and the potential reader. In this workshop, we'll cover how to examine large concepts and break them down into digestible chunks. When you find the method of journaling that works for you, you will be able to explore your ideas further.

As a bonus, journaling also improves your writing life and working towards a career as a writer because it provides a way to track submissions, create goals, revise, and more. If you feel out of sorts or disorganized in your writing life, this workshop is for you!

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HOLLY LYN WALRATH is a writer, editor, and publisher. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Analog, and Flash Fiction Online. She is the author of several books of poetry including "Glimmerglass Girl (2018), "Numinose Lapidi" (2020), and "The Smallest of Bones" (2021). She holds a B.A. in English from The University of Texas and a Master's in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. 

Tuesday, June 7th, 6:30p CST

Heidi Hermanson is a first-generation Nebraskan who has been published in Midwest Quarterly, Hiram Poetry Review, the Omaha World Herald (“Nebraska On A Dollar a Day”) and elsewhere.

     The recipient of two Pushcart nominations, a Nebraska book award, and various grants from both Amplify Arts and The Nebraska Arts Council, Heidi has organized and directed five ekphrastic shows which she describes as a marriage between visual art and poetry.

     From 2006 to 2012 she hosted "Naked Words", a monthly open mike. In 2010 she won the Omaha Public Library's annual poetry contest and performed her winning work accompanied by Silver Roots, a New York-based violin and flute duo. In 2008, Heidi received her MFA from the University of Nebraska.

     Having found herself with an abundance of time during the pandemic, she enjoys exploring every square foot of her state and documenting cemeteries and rivers.

Saturday, April 30th 10:00a CST

Regeneration—renewal, restoration, to be returned to a state of vigor especially following damage or loss—or a global pandemic. If you feel depleted and uninspired, or simply want to infuse your creative life with more joie de vivre, the Creative Regeneration process can rekindle your creative fire—that spark of sheer joy.

Creative Regeneration is a unique, four-part process, developed by Dr. Sarah Luczaj. You are likely familiar with some of the components—meditation, Gendlin’s focusing, free-writing, and intuitive painting. Each has value in and of itself. Combined, they have a synergistic impact that is intense, potent, and cumulative.

During this two-hour workshop, Kim Noriega—a certified Creative Regeneration facilitator—will take you through all four components of the process. Additionally, every participant will receive their own Ebook version of Dr. Luczaj’s book, "Creative Regeneration" for continued reference. You will need some supplies on hand for this workshop: whatever you’d like for meditation—a candle, incense, etc; pen and paper for freewriting; and paint—whatever suits you—and paper for the painting component. No knowledge or experience in any art form required to attend.

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KIM NORIEGA is the author of "Name Me", the title poem of which was a finalist for the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in textbooks, journals, and anthologies including: American Life in Poetry, Paris-Atlantic, Split Lip, and The Tishman Review. She was the winner of San Miguel Literary Sala’s Flash Nonfiction Prize, a finalist for the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize, and one of 30 poets selected to collaborate with 30 film artists as a part of the 2018 Visible Poetry Project.

Kim recently retired from a 30-year career with San Diego Public Library as the head of its family literacy program. She is a Teaching Artist and Writing Mentor with the Poetry Barn and President of the Board of Directors for the nonprofit, AIM Higher. She is a certified facilitator of the Creative Regeneration Process and an expert consultant in Family Literacy with the Pacific Library Partnership.

Kim is passionate about writing, teaching, wolf recovery, and the well being of feral cats. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Ernie, and—you guessed it—a clowder of cats. For more about Kim’s work and her offerings visit kimnoriega.com.

Thursday, March 24th 6:30p CST

By popular request we are bringing you a virtual opportunity to read your poetry, get feedback, and meet other members of the Nebraska Poetry Society.

This will be a positive environment where everyone can feel comfortable sharing.

It will be an inspirational experience where you will hear from other poets about what is working in your poem.

Bring a poem you want to share or just arrive prepared to give honest, constructive, and positive feedback to other poets.

Saturday, January 22nd, 10:00a CST

Poets over the centuries have found value and challenge in dialoguing with the work of painters, photographers, sculptors and other artists who find expression through the physical image. It is a challenge because the poet trades in words—in the abstraction of words.  Many poets in the past didn't have access to art unless it was available in museums and other centers close to them.  Today, technology has given us access to great artwork from the past and in the present moment and from all over the world.  As Nebraska poets, there may be a great deal we can learn from the art of the Midwest which has a long tradition.  French novelist, Marcel Proust, made some provocative and helpful comments on art in his insanely long opus, A La Reserche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time): “It is only through art that we can escape from ourselves and know how another person sees a universe which is not the same as our own and whose landscapes would otherwise have remained as unknown as any there may be on the moon.” There is something richly complex about the strange combination of empathy and self-awareness, which strikes me as important to poets—how we can be native and alien to ourselves and to others and how productive that can be for poets.  This workshop will devote itself to writing in response to art—seeking language that can live up to the brilliance of great art.  The workshop will combine some useful considerations of technique and strategy with actual writing time and the time to share. 

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KWAME DAWES is the author of twenty-two books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His collection, Nebraska was published in 2019. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and George W. Holmes University Professor at the University of Nebraska.  He teaches in the Pacific MFA Program. He is Director of the African Poetry Book Fund and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. Dawes is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.  His awards include an Emmy, the Forward Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Nora Magid Award and the prestigious Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry. In 2021, Kwame Dawes was named editor of American Life in Poetry. In 2021, Dawes was nominated for the Neustadt Prize.

Tuesday, January 4th, 6:30p CST

Trey Moody is the author of Thought That Nature (Sarabande Books, 2014), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry.

His more recent poems have appeared in The Believer, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review, and New England Review.

He teaches at Creighton University and lives with his daughter in Omaha, Nebraska. 

Saturday, July 10th 10:00a CST

In this accessible, friendly workshop designed for writers of prose, we’ll go through the fundamentals of building a poem. You’ll learn to leap from your literary comfort zone into experiments with fragmentation, lineation, imagery, and more, and you’ll leave this workshop with a bouquet of poetic techniques you can start using right away.

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Freesia McKee (she/her) writes poetry, prose, and genres in-between. She’s the essays editor at South Florida Poetry Journal, a regular contributor to the Ploughshares blog, and teaches virtual writing classes to students all over the country from her home in Macomb, Illinois. Freesia’s work has appeared in Flyway, Bone Bouquet, So to Speak, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, CALYX, About Place Journal, and the Ms. Magazine Blog. Her poetry chapbook How Distant the City was published by Headmistress Press. Freesia welcomes you to connect with her at freesiamckee.com or through Twitter at @freesiamckee.

Saturday, April 10th 10:00a CST

In spring, we turn to life and flowers and sitcom clichés!

In this workshop, we'll try to avoid the latter, but we'll write poems about worlds waking up after winters (both calendar-wise and metaphorical). 

You'll hear some poems, write some poems and, if you like, share some of what you wrote.

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Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective. He runs poetry programming for the State Department, working in Nepal, Romania, Botswana and Belarus. Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and the author of "Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know"  and "The Baby That Ate Cincinnati."