One Book One Nebraska author Karen Russell at Nebraska Celebration of Books (Read More)
Karen Russell, author of The Antidote: A Novel, the 2026 One Book One Nebraska selection will give a talk in the UNL Union Swanson Auditorium as part of the Nebraska Celebration of Books (NCOB). Russell will be joined by guest speaker Judi gaiashkibos, Executive Director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs. Russell is the author of six books, including The Antidote, Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Her work has earned a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Pulitzer Prize finalist recognition, and multiple national awards. The Antidote is a National Book Award finalist, and has received the National Book Critics' Circle Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Russell is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Stanford University. The Nebraska Celebration of Books (NCOB) is a free, public literary festival honoring Nebraska authors, readers, and the statewide literary community. The event features author panels, book award presentations, vendor markets, and programming for both authors and readers. For more information and a schedule of events, visit the NCOB website at bookfestival.nebraska.gov
Fans of true crime will not want to miss author Debora Harding's talk about Dancing with the Octopus, a memoir detailing her 1978 abduction at the age of fourteen. This title is the 2024 One Book One Nebraska selection. Harding's book also describes meeting her attacker as she processed her traumatic adolescent experience in adulthood. Registration is required to receive an event link. Debora Harding spent her childhood in the midwest prairie states of Nebraska and Iowa. At the age of nineteen she dropped out of university to work for Senator Gary Hart’s presidential campaign, before relocating to Washington DC to run an environmental non-profit. Fed up with politics, she cycled across America where she met her English husband, author Thomas Harding. She then joined him in the UK and worked at an award-winning video production company that focused on the counter-culture protest movement in Europe. Later, she co-founded the UK’s first local television station in Oxford and gave birth to two children, Kadian and Sam. She is now a full-time writer and activist and splits her time between the United States and England.
The Celebration of Nebraska Books is scheduled for Saturday, October 12 from 2:30 - 6:00 p.m. in Lincoln, at a location to be determined. The celebration is free and open to the public.
