Wally A. Seiler (Read More)

Wally Seiler is a businessman, past chair of the Nebraska Library Commission, and past winner of a nationwide Mark Twain look-alike contest at Calaveras Jumping Frog Jubilee in Angels Camp, California.

Contact Information

Title: Independent Scholar
Email:
Phone: (308) 760-4693
Website:
City: Alliance

Presentations

Karen Gettert Shoemaker (Read More)

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.

Contact Information

Title: Independent Writer & Teacher
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (402) 489-0859
Website:
City: Lincoln

Presentations

Paul Siebert (Read More)

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.

Contact Information

Title: Independent Scholar
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (402) 366-8245
Website:
City: Lincoln

Presentations

Randall Snyder (Read More)

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.

Contact Information

Title: Freelance Museum
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (402) 423-5564
Website:
City: Lincoln

Presentations

Beth Sparrow (Read More)

Beth Sparrow is a native Nebraskan who can trace her Nebraska roots back to over 140 years ago. She graduated from Cambridge High School and went on to graduate from the University of Nebraska at Kearney with a degree in education. She has been tracing her family roots for over 20 years. She has attended many genealogy conferences, and is a member of several genealogical societies including the Nebraska State Genealogical Society, Association of Professional Genealogists, and the National Genealogical Society. She has served as conference coordinator, president and area representative for the state society. She has presented at many Nebraska libraries and genealogical societies, a genealogical society in Colorado and virtually at the National Genealogical Society’s conference. She currently owns and publishes the local county newspaper.

Contact Information

Title: Independent Scholar
Email: [email protected]
Phone: cell 402-710-0693, work 402-764-5341
Website:
City: Stromsburg

Joe Starita (Read More)

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.

Contact Information

Title: Professor -College of Journalism and Mass Communications -UNL
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (402) 423-9266
Website:
City: Lincoln

Presentations

Mary K. Stillwell (Read More)

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.

Contact Information

Title: Idependent Scholar
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (402) 476-4775
Website:
City: Lincoln

Presentations

Les Vilda (Read More)

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.

Contact Information

Title: Independent Scholar & Ambassador of the Sante Fe Trail
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (402) 821-3058
Website:
City: Wilber

C.A. Waller (Read More)

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.

Contact Information

Title: Musician
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (402) 325-6205
Website:
City: Lincoln

Presentations

Kent Warneke (Read More)

Kent Warneke has spent 40 years associated with the newspaper industry, most of them as editor of the Norfolk Daily News.  A native of Plainview, Neb., Warneke got his first exposure to journalism working for his father’s newspaper, the Plainview News.  After graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a degree in journalism and political science, he worked for the Omaha World-Herald for five years before moving to Norfolk.  He was inducted into the Nebraska Journalism Hall of Fame in 2012 and was name the Nebraska Press Association’s Master Editor-Publisher in 2019.  He and his wife, Susan, live in Norfolk and have two grown children.

Contact Information

Title: Editor Emeritus, Norfolk Daily News
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 402-649-5941 (cell)
Website:
City: Norfolk

Presentations

David Wells (Read More)

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 (Read More)

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.

Contact Information

Title: Independent Scholar & Honoree to the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (402) 484-5676
Website: https://joanwellstrickroper.com/
City: Lincoln

Presentations

Theodore Wheeler (Read More)

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.

Debra White (Read More)

Debra Kleve White is a native Nebraskan.  As a graduate of the University of Nebraska (UNL) and a former Yell Squad member (1977-1980), her education and college experiences led her toward a path of gratitude and a desire to give back to the University.  In doing so, she developed her passion for history and research, concentrating on the UNL athletic department and Spirit Squad, where her love lies.  Her background is in education where she worked at the University of Texas at Austin for 12 years in the College of Education’s Institute for Public School Initiatives.  Also, she worked in a career as a real estate broker in Austin, Texas for 38 years.  In her spare time White would return to Lincoln to research the history of the UNL Spirit Squad and sports.  After 15 years of research and 5 years of writing, her first book was released titled:  The Spirit of Nebraska:  A history of Husker Game Day Traditions – The Tunnel Walk, Mascots, Cheer & More.    The foreword to the book was written by Tom Osborne.

Contact Information

Title: Author
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 512-964-1455
Website:
City: Lincoln

Presentations

Eileen Wirth (Read More)

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.

Contact Information

Title: Professor of Journalism Emeritus, Creighton University
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (402) 659-5457
Website:
City: Omaha

Presentations

Edward Zimmer (Read More)

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.

Contact Information

Title: Retired Preservation Planner, Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Department
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (402) 430-7814
Website:
City: Lincoln

Presentations