Nebraska Poets

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).

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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.

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.

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.

Hadara Bar-Nadav is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, the Lucille Medwick Award from the Poetry Society of America, a fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and other honors.

Her books include The Animal Is Chemical (Four Way Books, 2024), awarded the Levis Prize in Poetry, selected by Jericho Brown; The New Nudity (Saturnalia Books, 2017); Lullaby (with Exit Sign) (Saturnalia Books, 2013), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin (New Issues, 2012), Editor’s Selection/Runner Up for the Green Rose Prize; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), awarded the Margie Book Prize.  

She is also the author of two chapbooks, Fountain and Furnace (Tupelo Press, 2015), awarded the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/Green Tower Press 2010), awarded the Midwest Poets Series Prize.  In addition, she is co-author with Michelle Boisseau of the best-selling textbook Writing Poems, 8th ed. (Pearson, 2011).

Her poetry has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Believer, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. A current reader for Poetry, she is a Professor of English and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She received her Ph.D. in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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.

John Brehm is the author of four books of original poetry: Sea of Faith, Help Is on the Way, No Day at the Beach, and most recently, Dharma Talk. He’s also the author of a book of essays, The Dharma of Poetry: How Poems Can Deepen Your Spiritual Practice and Open You to Joy, and the editor of the bestselling anthology The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy, both from Wisdom Publications.

With his wife, Felden­krais teacher Alice Boyd, he leads mindfulness retreats that incorporate Feldenkrais Awareness through Movement lessons, meditation, and mindful poetry discussions. He lives in Portland, Oregon, but misses Lincoln. Learn more on his website.

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.

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. 

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.

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.”

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.

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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.

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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.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s most recent honors include 2023 Thomas Wolfe Prize and Lecture. Her most recent book, Look at This Blue, was a 2022 National Book Award Finalist, a CLMP Firecracker Award Finalist, an ASLE Book of the Year Finalist, and won the 2022-2023 Emory Elliott Book Award.

In 2021, she was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters and awarded the 2021 AWP George Garrett Award from AWP. Hedge Coke was selected for an inaugural Legacy Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council (2021-2022), and recently awarded the UCR Dean’s Mellon Professorship (2022-2023). 

An American Book Award winning author and 2016 Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellow, she has written or edited 18 books and is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing for the University of California Riverside, where she directs UCR Writers Week Festival, directs the Medical Health and Humanities Designated Emphasis in the School of Medicine, where she teaches Death and Dying and Narrative Medicine, and is affiliated faculty for the newUCR department of Society, Health Equity, and Sustainability. 

Hedge Coke was the founder/director of the Literary Arts Crane Retreat and Sandhill Crane festival in Alda and Kearney, Nebraska and served as the Distinguished Paul and Clarice Reynolds Chair for the University of Nebraska system and taught for UNK and UNO for nine years (cumulative). 

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.

Judy Brackett Crowe, born in Fremont, Nebraska, has lived in the California foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada for many years. Her poems have appeared in Oberon, Fish Anthology, Epoch, The Maine Review, The MacGuffin, Commonweal, Cloudbank, Subtropics, and elsewhere.

She has taught English and creative writing at Sierra College and is a longtime member of the Community of Writers. Her chapbook, Flat Water: Nebraska Poems, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry book, The Watching Sky, was published by Cornerstone Press in 2024 and received the Nebraska Book Award in Poetry for 2025.

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.

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).

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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.

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. 

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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.

Gene Fendt taught at UNK, where he was Albertus Magnus Professor of Philosophy, for about 40 years and was blessed to have Don Welch for a colleague through most of those decades.

Besides the usual (and unusual) scholarly publications, he also wrote and published poetry in numerous journals winning several awards including Gemini magazine's open poetry competition (nominated for a Pushcart), the Princemere Poetry Prize, and two Nebraska Individual Artist Fellowships.

Together with Don Welch he authored The Cranes, A Book of Hours which was written out by noted Nebraska calligrapher Arthur Pierce. His first book of poetry, Eternal Life and other poems was published by Angelico Press of Brooklyn, NY in 2025. ​

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.

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.

Janice N. Harrington’s writing reflects her interest in cultural history, the natural world, visual arts, and African American Life in the South and Midwest.  

Her latest book of poetry, Yard Show (BOA Editions), grows out of her three earlier books of poems, Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone, The Hands of Strangers, and Primitive: The Art and Life of Horace H. Pippin.

Harrington is also an award-winning children’s author. She is a Cave Canem fellow and teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She grew up in Nebraska and Alabama and both of these settings figure largely in her writing.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Adrian Elizabeth Koesters is a poet, novelist and nonfiction writer. She holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she was assistant editor in Poetry for Prairie Schooner magazine and graduate assistant editor for Ted Kooser and Patricia Emile on the syndicated newspaper column, "American Life in Poetry.” She has taught creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Creighton University. 

Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, South Dakota Poetry Review, Blast Furnace, Berkeley Poetry Review, Split Rock Review, The Inflectionist Review, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Henniker Review, The Gettysburg Review, Hotel Amerika, International Poetry Review, Crab Creek Review,  A River and Sound Review, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. Her poetry collections include Many Parishes (2013) and Three Days with the Long Moon (2017), both from BrickHouse Books.

Greg Kosmicki has published eight chapbooks and seven full-length collections of poetry with ten different presses. His most recent collection, The dog has no answers, was published in September, 2023, by Main Street Rag Publishing Co. His 2016 collection, It's As Good Here as it Gets Anywhere, from Logan House Press, was a finalist for the 2017 High Plains Book Award.

Individual poems of his have been published in Paris Review, New Letters, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Kansas Quarterly, Briar Cliff Review, Laurel Review, Poetry NOW, and many others. His poems have been selected to be read on "Writer's Almanac." He has twice been awarded an Artist's Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council for his poetry.

In 1998, he founded The Backwaters Press, which published more than 100 books under his direction, until it was given to the University of Nebraska Press in 2017 as an imprint of that press. The University press continues to offer The Backwaters Prize for poetry collections, which he started in 2000.

Greg also works creatively as an abstract painter. He and his wife of 52 years, Debbie, are retired and live in Omaha, Nebraska, where he continues to write and paint. 

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)

Kiara Nicole Letcher is the author of Oxblood, (Agape Editions, 2024) and the chapbook Scream Queen (Orchard Street Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, Plainsongs Magazine, Solstice Literary Magazine, Querencia Press, Mulberry Literary and Laurel Review, among other publications.

She received her MFA from The University of Nebraska at Omaha and previously served as a Board Member for the Nebraska Writer’s Collective. She was the 2024 and 2025 Keynote Speaker for the Nebraska Scholastic Writing Awards and a Nebraska State Poet Nominee. You can find her at her website or on Instagram @kiaranicolebang.

Judy Lorenzen is a poet, writer, and teaching artist. Her education includes a Doctorate of English, Composition and Rhetoric, December 2016, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Dissertation: Teaching Place: Heritage, Home and Community, the Heart of Education; Master of Art in Creative Writing, May 2008, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Thesis: Let Autumn Come; Doctorate of Theology, May 2000, Andersonville Theological Seminary; Master of Science in Community Counseling, May 1998, University of Nebraska at Kearney; and a Bachelor of Arts in English, Emphasis in Writing, Philosophy Minor, May 1995, University of Nebraska at Kearney.

Her first book, Turning Back to Her Love Pages, was published in June 2025. She is now hoping to find a home for her second book, Seasons of Reverence. Her online publications include Jama’s Alphabet Soup, Blue Lake Review, Verse-Virtual, North Dakota Quarterly, Front Porch Review, Silver Birch Press, Super Poetry Highway, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY, Dirigible Balloon, and Blue Heron Review among others.

Kelly Madigan is a poet, essayist and conservation advocate living in the Loess Hills of western Iowa. She previously resided in Nebraska for over 30 years.

Her work has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Distinguished Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council.

In 2020, Kelly walked the entire length of the Loess Hills in Iowa in an effort to understand her landscape on foot. In 2013, she crossed the Nebraska panhandle on foot.

Her books include The Edge of Known Things (SFASU Press) and Getting Sober (McGraw-Hill).

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.

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. 

Brad Aaron Modlin came to Nebraska to be a professor/The Reynolds Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at University of Nebraska, Kearney and teach undergraduates & in the online creative writing master’s program. The sandhill cranes were a bonus!

His internationally viral poetry has been experienced two million times. His book Everyone at This Party Has Two Names is available from Black Lawrence Press. His work appears in the Pushcart Prize anthology; Brevity; Poetry Unbound; The Slowdown; & The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Also orchestral scores, Australian art galleries, Brooklyn public art, and his grampa’s refrigerator.

He has received support from the Banff Centre, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, & the Nebraska Arts Council. He likes talking with strangers and asking friends to share examples of hope. 

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.

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.

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. 

Maria Nazos grew up in Athens, Greece, and Joliet, Illinois. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, TriQuarterly, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. 

She’s the author of the poetry collection PULSE (Omnidawn 2026) and the translation collection The Slow Horizon that Breathes (World Poetry Books, 2023) from the poet Dimitra Kotoula, longlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award.

Maria has worked almost every job, including as a whale watch boat attendant, table dancer, teacher, barista, sunglass salesperson, bartender, and probably the worst waitress in the entire history of the Eastern seaboard. If she spilled Pinot Noir on you, she apologizes.

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.

Chuck Peek is a Provincetown storyteller who musician Zoe Lewis called “one of the magic people we have met on the road of life,” and some witty guy once dubbed him “the Johnathan Winters of Willa Cather Scholars.”

His curriculum vita began by citing driving the Etoile in Paris at morning rush hour and holding the liquor license for the Cather Foundation. One book, two chapbooks, and dozens of individual poems later (one of them in Ted Kooser’s This American Life in Poetry,) someone decided he was a poet. All that while he taught at four universities as academia in America crumbled.

Holly Pelesky 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.

Charlene Pierce, a poet and teaching artist, creates welcoming spaces for writers to deepen their craft and connect in community. She is the founder and President of the Nebraska Poetry Society (launched in 2020) to foster accessibility, equity, and community in the literary arts.

A Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net finalist, her work appears in Poetry Foundation, TriQuarterly, Whale Road Review, The Good Life Review, and 805 Lit + Art, among others, and has been anthologized in Until There Are No Words Left and Misbehaving Nebraskans.

The Poetry Foundation selected her to teach a poetry workshop, publish a craft essay, and give a public reading for the Form and Features Series.

She has an MFA from Pacific University where she was a Merit Scholar. Her work is rooted in justice, restoration, and the belief that poetry can help us return to ourselves and to one another.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Todd Robinson is the author of Mass for Shut-Ins (University of Nebraska Press, 2018) and Note at Heart Rock (Main Street Rag, 2012). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Rattle, North American Review, and Rhino. He is an Associate Professor in the Writer's Workshop at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and caregiver to his partner, a disabled physician. 

Jewel Rodgers is an interdisciplinary spoken word poet, performer, and visual artist from North Omaha, Nebraska. She is a 2025-2029 Nebraska State Poet, a 2023 Union for Contemporary Art Fellow and Populus Fund Grantee, and a 2022-2023 Omaha Entertainment & Arts Awards nominee for Best Performance Poet in Omaha. Alongside her artistic practice, she creates and maintains privately-held community amenities for public use while working professionally in commercial real estate. ​

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.

Mark Sanders is a Nebraska native, born in Creighton and raised on the eastern rim of the Sandhills at Ord.

Among his books of poetry are The Suicide (1988),  Before We Lost Our Ways (1996), Here in the Big Empty (2006), Conditions of Grace: New and Selected Poems (2011), Landscapes, with Horses (2018), and In a Good Time (2019).  The latter two books received Nebraska Book Awards; Landscapes, with Horses was awarded the 2019 Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  

His edited works include A Sandhills Reader: 30 Years of Great Writing from the Great Plains and The Weight of the Weather: Regarding the Poetry of Ted Kooser, both recipients of the Nebraska Book Award, in 2016 and 2018 respectively.  

In 2007, he was awarded the Mildred Bennett Award for fostering Nebraska’s literary heritage.  His most recent book is Homecoming Parade:  Memoir  (2024), and his next book of poems, The Messiah Horse:  Poems 1988-2025, is forthcoming in 2027.  

He and his wife operate a small farm devoted to big dogs and horses in east Texas.

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.

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.

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 on her website.

James Solheim book 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. 

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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.

Kim McNealy Sosin is a retired university professor of economics who eagerly took up writing poetry and photography in retirement, making her a “new poet” in her seventies. She loves to create ekphrastic poetry using her own travel photographs. Her poems and photographs have appeared in publications including Raw Art Review, Fine Lines (poems and several cover photos), Failed Haiku, Voices from the Plains, Verses from the Plains (several poems and cover design), Landscape Photography Magazine, The Heron’s Nest, The Good Life Review (poem and cover photo), Wanderlust Journal, Ekphrastic Review, and Sandcutters.  

She published her first poetry chapbook, Not Quite on Grand Avenue: Poems of the Early Years, which explores the challenges and joys of growing up as a young girl in a rural town in the forties and fifties. Her second chapbook is coming out in the fall with poems by a co-author Janet Rives and Sosin’s photographs of France. Reflections of France: Images and Poems.

Mary K. Stillwell has studied with William Packard and Erica Jong in New York and Ted Kooser and Hilda Raz on the plains. She earned her PhD in plains literature from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Her poems and criticism has appeared in The Paris Review, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Midwest Quarterly, South Dakota Review, The New York Quarterly, Midwest Quarterly, Book of Re-reading of Recent American Poetry II, Women’s Studies, More in Time, and numerous anthologies. Most recently, her poem, “Open Door, Green and Pine,” was published in the spring 2023 issue of Prairie Schooner.

She is the author of The Life and Poetry of Ted Kooser, published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2013. Her books include Reasonable Doubts (Finishing Line Press, 2020), Maps & Destinations (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2018), Fallen Angels (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and Moving to Malibu (Sandhills Press, 1990). Nebraska Presence, an anthology of Nebraska poetry, co-edited by Stillwell and Greg Kosmicki, was the 2018 One Book One Nebraska selection. Stillwell is a native Nebraskan. She was raised in Omaha and on a farm in southeast Nebraska. Parents of two adult children, Stillwell and her partner, Frank Edler, live in Lincoln.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.