Larksong Writers Place

First Friday Reading & Book Talk Series (Read More)

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. July 5 Daniel Simon, poet and publisher August 2 Anna Monardo, fiction writer, memoirist, and professor September 6 Shanan Ballam, Poet Laureate of Logan, Utah October 4 Terese Svoboda, fiction writer November 1, 2024 William Trowbridge, poet, former Poet Laureate of Missouri

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Voices at Larksong (fourth Thursday): JV Brummels and Chad Christensen (Read More)

A monthly in-house reading series with new guests each month, beginning with social time at 5:30 pm followed by the reading/music from 6:00 – 7:30 pm. Guests will include writers of all genres and (frequently) musicians. Thursday, June 27, 2024 features JV Brummels and Chad Christensen. JV Brummels’ fifth collection, City at War, was published by The Backwaters Press in late 2009. His work has been recognized with a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Elkhorn Prize and the Mildred Bennett Award for contributions to the state’s literature from the Nebraska Center for the Book. His Book of Grass was awarded the 2008 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry. Raised first on a farm and later on a ranch, he was educated at the University of Nebraska and later Syracuse University. In 1984 he began a horseback cattle outfit to raise natural, grass-fed beef, which he still operates. A longtime professor at Wayne State College, he’s also written and published short fiction and a novel. For the last 20 years he’s served as publisher of Logan House, co-founded with Jim Reese, which specializes in contemporary American poetry. In 2006 he was named director of the newly created WSC Press. Chad Christensen is a professor of English at Wayne State College. He also serves as the Managing Editor of the WSC Press and director of the Plains Writers Series. He teaches creative writing (poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction), editing, publishing, and literature. He’s also the advisor for the student literary magazine Judas Goat and the WSC Poetry and Fiction Slams. He’s been teaching full time at Wayne State College since 2012 and received the Balsley Whitmore Excellence in Teaching Award in 2015 and 2020.

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Third Thursdays – Voices at Larksong: Julie Paschold and Kelly Weber (Read More)

A monthly in-house reading series with new guests each month, beginning with social time at 5:30 pm followed by the reading/music from 6:00 – 7:30 pm. Guests will include writers of all genres and (frequently) musicians. Thursday, May 16, 2024 features poets Julie Paschold and Kelly Weber. Julie S. Paschold (Tansy Julie the Soaring Eagle) is a queer disabled poet and artist from Nebraska.  They have their BS and MS in agronomy from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Their first book, Horizons (Atmosphere Press) is a collection of poetry honoring soil, one of our nonrenewable resources. Julie has been published in AKA’s Advocate, Fine Lines, Plainsongs, The Awakenings Review, the Nebraska Writer’s Guild, The Raven’s Perch, Iconoclast, The Radical Teacher, and several publications on medium.com. Two of their chapbooks won honorable mention in contests by Writer's Digest in 2021 and 2022. Julie sells their sketches at Ravenwood in Norfolk, NE. Kelly Weber (they/she) is the author of We Are Changed to Deer at the Broken Place (Tupelo Press, 2022) and You Bury the Birds in My Pelvis, winner of the 2022 Omnidawn First/Second Book Prize (forthcoming December 2023). They have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Pleaides, Waxwing, Gulf Coast Online, Electric Literature’s The Commuter, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University.

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Third Thursdays – Voices at Larksong: Speculative Fiction Writers Group (Read More)

A monthly in-house reading series with new guests each month, beginning with social time at 5:30 pm followed by the reading/music from 6:00 – 7:30 pm. Guests will include writers of all genres and (frequently) musicians. Thursday, April 18, 2024, features writers from Larksong's Speculative Fiction Writers Group.

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First Friday Book Talk & Reading w Katherine Higgs-Coulthard (Read More)

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. Kat Higgs-Coulthard is a graduate of University of Nebraska at Omaha and the author of Junkyard Dogs, described by Kirkus as  "A mean-streets-style tale raw in language and feeling alike . . .visceral."  Her work has appeared in Cleaver, Women on Writing, and School Library Journal. She is an associate professor of Education at Saint Mary’s College and Director of Michiana Writers' Center. She lives in Niles, Michigan.

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Third Thursdays – Voices at Larksong: Amy Haddad & Carolina Hotchandani (Read More)

A monthly in-house reading series with new guests each month, beginning with social time at 5:30 pm followed by the reading/music from 6:00 – 7:30 pm. Guests will include writers of all genres and (frequently) musicians. Thursday, March 21, 2024, features poets Amy Haddad and Carolina Hotchandani. Amy Haddad is the 2019 recipient of the Annals of Internal Medicine poetry prize for “Families Like This” for the best poem published in the journal. She won third-place for the 2019 Kalanithi Writing Awards from Stanford University for her poem “Dark Rides.” Her chapbook, “The Geography of Kitchens,” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Her first poetry collection, “An Otherwise Healthy Woman,” was published by Backwaters Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press in early 2022. “An Otherwise Healthy Woman” was awarded twice in the 2022 AJN Book of the Year Awards: first place in the Creative Works Category and second place in the Professional Issues Category. Carolina Hotchandani is the author of The Book Eaters, 2023 Perugia Press Prize Winner, which was one of the ten debut poetry books featured in the 2024 Poets & Writers Magazine’s Debut Poets issue. Hotchandani holds degrees from Brown, Texas State, and Northwestern universities and has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Community of Writers, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and Tin House Writers’ Workshop. Her poetry has appeared in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Blackbird, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. She is a Goodrich Assistant Professor of English in Omaha, Nebraska, where she lives with her husband and daughter.

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First Friday Book Talk & Reading w Lee Ann Roripaugh (Read More)

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. Lee Ann Roripaugh is the author of four volumes of poetry, the most recent of which, Dandarians, was released by Milkweed Editions in September 2014.  Her second volume, Year of the Snake (Southern Illinois University Press), was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004, and her first book, Beyond Heart Mountain (Penguin Books), was a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series.  The recipient of a 2003 Archibald Bush Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship, she was also named the 2004 winner of the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, the 2001 winner of the Frederick Manfred Award for Best Creative Writing awarded by the Western Literature Association, and the 1995 winner of the Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize.  Her short stories have been shortlisted as stories of note in the Pushcart Prize anthologies, and two of her essays have been shortlisted as essays of note for the Best American Essays anthology.  Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.  Roripaugh is currently a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Director of Creative Writing and Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review.

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First Friday Book Talk & Reading w Timothy Schaffert (Read More)

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. Timothy Schaffert is the author of six novels, most recently THE PERFUME THIEF (Doubleday; August, 2021). His other books include: THE SWAN GONDOLA (Riverhead/Penguin); THE COFFINS OF LITTLE HOPE, DEVILS IN THE SUGAR SHOP, THE SINGING AND DANCING DAUGHTERS OF GOD and THE PHANTOM LIMBS OF THE ROLLOW SISTERS (all from Unbridled Books). He has served as editor of two books from University of Nebraska Press: YOU WILL NEVER SEE ANY GOD (stories by Ervin Krause); and MORE IN TIME: A TRIBUTE TO TED KOOSER, with Jessica Poli and Marco Abel. His books have been selected as an Indie Next pick, and for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers program, and recommended as a New York Times Editors' Choice. THE SWAN GONDOLA was an Oprah.com Book of the Week, and a recommended read from Good Housekeeping, People, The Week, Library Journal, Booklist, & Historical Novel Review.

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First Friday Book Talk & Reading with Pamela Petro (Read More)

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. Pamela Petro is an author, artist, and educator living in Northampton, MA, with her partner, Marguerite, and Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Topaz. She has written four books of creative nonfiction including her latest, The Long Field – Wales and the Presence of Absence, a Memoir, as well as Travels in an Old Tongue, also about Wales; Sitting up with the Dead, about the American South; and The Slow Breath of Stone, about Southwest France. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, The Atlantic, Granta, Guernica, The Paris Review, and others. The Long Field was shortlisted for The Wales Book of the Year Award and was named to Top Ten Travel Book lists by The Financial Times and The Sunday Telegraph. Pamela teaches creative writing at Smith College and on Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, and is co-Director of the Dylan Thomas Summer School at the University of Wales, Trinity St Davids, where she is also a Fellow. She has widely exhibited her photography and has also created an artist book, AfterShadows - A Grand Canyon Narrative, and a graphic script, Under Paradise Valley.

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