Nebraska Poets Reading Series

Poetry Pause is a welcoming, low-pressure way to experience poetry in community.

Each month, we feature two local poets at different points in their writing lives—one seasoned and one emerging—who will share their work, talk with each other about poetry and the creative process, and answer questions from the audience.

This event is designed for everyone, whether you read poetry often or have never attended a poetry reading before. The atmosphere is light, conversational, and approachable, offering a chance to slow down, listen, and connect with poetry in a relaxed (and air conditioned) setting.

Come for the Art Walk, stay for a few poems, and enjoy an evening of creative connection inside one of Omaha’s most beautiful historic spaces.
 

May Poets:

​​Carolina Hotchandani is the author of The Book Eaters, which won the 2023 Perugia Press Prize, a 2024 Nebraska Book Award, and was one of ten debut poetry books featured in Poets & Writers Magazine’s 2024 Debut Poets Issue. Her work has been supported by Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a Tin House Scholar Award, a Community of Writers Scholarship, and a Nebraska Arts Council Award. Her poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, and other magazines. She is a Goodrich Associate Professor of English in Omaha, Nebraska.

 

Zachary Blair is a poet, short story writer, and graduate student in the UNO Writer's Workshop. He has been featured in The 13th Floor Magazine and as a featured speaker for The 13th Floor Reading Series, The Toddfather and Friends Reading Series, and the Nebraska New Voices Reading Series.

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FREE and Open to the Public

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. 

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FREE and Open to the Public

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).

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FREE and Open to the Public

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.

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FREE and Open to the Public

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.

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FREE and Open to the Public

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.

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FREE and Open to the Public

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.

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FREE and Open to the Public

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. 

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FREE and Open to the Public