Nebraska Poets Reading Series

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.

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FREE and Open to the Public

Jewel Rodgers is an interdisciplinary spoken word poet, performer, and visual artist from North Omaha, Nebraska.

 

She is a 2025-2029 Nebraska State Poet Nominee, 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. 

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FREE and Open to the Public

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). ​

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FREE and Open to the Public

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.

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FREE and Open to the Public

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.

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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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FREE and Open to the Public

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.

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FREE and Open to the Public

Charles Fort is the author of eight books of poetry and ten chapbooks including: The Town Clock Burning (St. Andrews Press)--We Did Not Fear the Father (Red Hen Press)--Darvil, Prose Poems Book 1 (St. Andrews Press)—We Did Not Fear the Father (Carnegie Mellon University Press, reprint, Contemporary Classic)--Frankenstein was a Negro, Prose Poems Book 2 (Backwaters Press)-- Mrs. Belladonna’s Supper Club Waltz, Book 3 (Backwaters Press) and appears in 43 anthologies and The Best American Poetry, 2001, 2003, and 2016.

 

Fort is Emeritus Distinguished Endowed Professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Founder of the Wendy Fort Foundation Theater of Fine Arts.

 

Fort received the Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, honoris causa, from Siena Heights University and Faculty Scholar Awards from the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Southern Connecticut State University. The New York Times Book Review: ...consistently interesting—often luminous poetry…  ​

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FREE and Open to the Public