This monthly online (Zoom) reading series called First Friday Readings features authors with Nebraska connections, national presence, and a newly published book. The hourlong event, moderated by Larksong director Karen Shoemaker, will include both the author’s reading and Q&A with the audience. The event is free, but registration is required to receive the link.

Nancy Welch’s latest collection of short stories Ten More Things About Us received the 2023 Black Lawrence Press Prize for Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, and elsewhere with citations in Best American Short Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, O. Henry, and Pushcart. Her debut collection, The Road from Prosperity, was published by Southern Methodist University Press. Her political essays on caretaking labor and higher education have appeared in Spectre, Tempest, International Socialist Review, and other journals. Professor of English Emerita at the University of Vermont, she lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she has returned to horseback riding after a forty-year hiatus and is embracing her identities as a writer and barn rat.