Speakers

Karen Gettert Shoemaker is the author of the novel The Meaning of Names (Red Hen Press, 2014) and Night Sounds and Other Stories (Dufour Editions, 2002; UK edition – Parthian Press, 2006). She has published stories in the Prairie Schooner, the London Independent, The South Dakota Review, Fugue, Kalliope, and others. Her stories and poems have been anthologized in A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers; Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace; An Untidy Season; and Nebraska Presence: An Anthology of Poetry. She has received fellowships to Brush Creek Ranch Artist Colony and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She is the recipient of a Nebraska Center for the Book Award for Fiction; two Independent Artist Fellowships from the Nebraska Arts Council, and a Nebraska Press Award for Feature Writing. She is a faculty mentor with the University of Nebraska MFA in Writing Program.

For more than 30 years, Paul Siebert’s quality blend of live Family Entertainment has delighted thousands with his unique style and vast repertoire. A multi acoustic instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, Paul is equally at home on concert stage, elementary school classroom, living history events, corporate dinners, senior communities, weddings or just an evening around the campfire with friends. Paul features the Hammer Dulcimer, guitar, banjo, button accordion plus numerous instruments along with vocals, specializing in strolling, playing live or using wireless mikes on his own sound system. Each presentation is carefully crafted to suit the specific age group, special interest, unique to each venue.

Randall Snyder is a composer and jazz musician living in Lincoln, NE. and teaches at Peru State College. He was born in Chicago in 1944 and studied saxophone with his father, a professional jazz musician. In high school he received a scholarship to the Stan Kenton Band Camp and in 1962 was honored with a Downbeat magazine Student Hall of Fame award. He attended Quincy College and the University of Wisconsin, receiving a Ph.D. degree in 1973. He has also received fellowships to study Korean music at the Traditional Performing Arts Institute in Seoul. Snyder has taught courses in jazz, ethnomusicology and rock and roll at UNL. Some 100 of his of pieces have been published, with several commercially recorded. His orchestral and chamber music has won several composition contest prizes and in 1992 Snyder was the recipient of an NEA grant as composer-in-residence with the Nebraska Chamber Orchestra. His music has been played by various chamber ensembles, symphonies and jazz orchestras. The Nebraska Arts Council has given him several fellowships. He also has been active as a jazz performer, appearing as bassist in two documentary films with Kansas City pianist Jay McShann.

Joe Starita is the author of “I Am a Man: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice”, Nebraska’s reading choice for the 2012 One Book One Nebraska statewide reading program. He also authored, "Warrior of the People: How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Inequality to Become America's First Indian Doctor." Before joining the University of Nebraska journalism faculty in 2000, Starita spent 13 years at the Miami Herald, where he served as the paper’s New York bureau chief from 1983-1987. Interested in American Indian history and culture since his youth, Starita returned to his native Nebraska in 1992 and began work on a three-year book project about five generations of an Indian family. “The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge – A Lakota Odyssey” was published in 1995, has been translated into six foreign languages and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

A native Nebraskan, Mary K. Stillwell has studied writing in both New York and on the Plains and has published poetry in a wide variety of journals. Her most recent chapbook of poems, Reasonable Doubts, was published this year by Finishing Line Press.  A full-length collection, Maps and Destinations, was published in 2014 by the Stephen F. Austin State University Press (Texas). Stillwell’s An Introduction to the Life and Work of Ted Kooser was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2013. That same year, her chapbook of poems, Fallen Angels, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her first book of poems, Moving to Malibu, was published by Sandhills Press. Stillwell, whose dissertation was on the work of four contemporary Nebraska poets, holds a doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was co-editor of Nebraska Presence, an anthology of contemporary Nebraska poets, published in 2008 by Backwaters Press and selected in 2019 by the One Book One Nebraska program.

Phyllis Stone is an elder of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, served on the Nebraska Indian Commission, and was named Outstanding Indian Woman of Nebraska in 1985.

Les Vilda is a graduate of Doane College in Crete and has been a featured performer in more than 750 living-history reenactments in 24 states. He portrayed a Fort Hayes buffalo hunter in the movie “Dances With Wolves,” has canoed 2,500 miles on the Missouri River and 500 miles on the Mississippi River, and has traveled more than 2,000 miles along the Santa Fe Trail.

Award-winning blues artist C.A. Waller, has been singing and playing the blues throughout the Midwest and South for more that 40 years. Through performance, storytelling, and a discussion of historical context Mr. Waller presents the musical styles, personal stories, and cultural background of the blues, and the people who sang and lived the blues. The story of the blues is the story of the establishment and development of the African-American society in our country, and the valuable contribution its practitioners have made to our collective culture. C.A. Waller is dedicated to the preservation of this unique oral tradition.

David Wells was born in Lincoln in 1948 and attended Northeast, then UNL and UNO. He retired from his printing business in 2018 after 38 years. Married with two grown daughters, he now lives in Omaha. He has done extensive research on Nebraska's connections to the Civil War and the Nebraska Dept of the GAR. His work on the soldiers' monuments & memorials in Nebraska was given a Certificate of Commendation by the AASLH in 1997 and he has been on the Board of Directors of the Civil War Veterans Museum in Nebraska City since 1993.

Joan Wells is a native Nebraskan and holds a B.A. in Physical Education from the University of Nebraska-Kearney with additional course work in Adult Education and Sports Studies. Joan has toured with her trick roping and western music for the National School Assemblies Agency of Hollywood,CA and won the title as Women’s World Champion Trick Roper at the Will Rogers Trick Roping Contest in Claremore, OK. In 1989 she was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Ft. Worth. Joan continues to perform for western theme events, conventions, schools, stage shows, and wild west show re-enactments.

Theodore Wheeler is the bestselling author of three novels, most recently the USA Today bestseller The War Begins in Paris (Little Brown, Nov 14, 2023). His other novels include Kings of Broken Things (Little A, 2017), an Amazon bestseller, and In Our Other Lives (Little A, 2020), both of which are set on the Great Plains. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Nebraska Arts Council, and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. For fourteen years Theodore worked as a journalist who covered law and politics, and he now teaches creative writing in the English Department at Creighton University.

Dr. Eileen Wirth is a professor emeritus of journalism at Creighton University and a senior writer for Legacy Preservation. A native of Nebraska City, she was a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald and a public relations writer for Union Pacific Railroad before joining Creighton in 1991. She chaired the Department of Journalism, Media & Computing for 19 years and retired in 2016. Wirth has written eight books including several on regional history. These include From Society Page to Front Page, the history of Nebraska’s women journalism; Historic Omaha Houses of Worship; The Women Who Built Omaha a Bold and Remarkable History; and her forthcoming book on the history of Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium. Long active in the community, Wirth is a member of the Nebraska State Historical Society Board and a former president of the Omaha Library Board, the Omaha Library Foundation, Friends of the Library, the Omaha Press Club Foundation and St. Cecilia’s School Board. She is a member of the Omaha Press Club’s Hall of Fame and the Jaycees Ten Outstanding Young Omahans Hall of Fame. She also received the 2019 Communicator of Achievement Award from the National Federation of Press Women. She has a B.A. in Journalism and Political Science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota, an M.A. in Journalism and a Ph.D. in Political Science from UNL.

Ed Zimmer has been the historic preservation planner for the Lincoln Planning Department since 1985. He emphasizes outreach through illustrated talks, walks, and bike and bus tours. He has also been an adjunct instructor for the UN-L College of Architecture. He is a native of Omaha and spent a decade studying and working in Boston, earning a Ph.D. in American studies from Boston University in 1984. While in Massachusetts he freelanced as a researcher and writer for clients including Peabody Museum at Harvard University and the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.