Each month Writers in Conversation invites two writers at differing stages of their writing career to share their work and engage one another in conversation about the craft of creative writing. The conversation is then opened to the entire audience for a lively discussion of all things literary. The evening is sure to both please and educate, not to mention inspire!
February 20, 2025 Writers:
Twyla M. Hansen's newest poetry book is Feeding the Fire, 2023 Winner—Nebraska Book Award and Finalist—WILLA Literary Award. She is a Larksong Writers Place board member, Humanities Nebraska Speaker’s Bureau creative writing presenter, and was Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018. Recent honors include the Nebraska Literary Heritage Award, Nebraska Center for the Book President’s Award, and Lincoln High School Distinguished Alumni Award. Her book Rock • Tree • Bird won both the 2018 Nebraska Book Award and WILLA Literary Award. Twyla’s writing is published recently in Briar Cliff Review, The Café Review, Oakwood, Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, More in Time: A Tribute to Ted Kooser, Nebraska Poetry Sesquicentennial Anthology 1867-2017, and on the websites of Academy of American Poets, Poetry Foundation, and Poetry Out Loud, plus many more.
Karla Hernandez Torrijos (she/her) is a poet and workshop facilitator. Beginning at an open mic in 2017, Karla has been invited to read her work in venues across Nebraska, including The Bay, El Museo Latino, and The UNL Wick Alumni Center. The recipient of the 2024 Kate Sommer Memorial Poetry Prize, the 2024 Gaffney Prize for Poetry, the 2023 Irby F. Wood Prize for Poetry, and the 2021 Vreeland Award for Poetry, her writing interrogates our understanding of home, displacement, and the liminal space in between. Karla was the 2021-2022 Creative in Community Resident for the LUX Center for the Arts and the inaugural Student Storyteller in Residence for The Center for Great Plains Studies. Her chapbook saturn devouring his daughter is forthcoming from Game Over Books.
PREVIOUS WRITERS IN CONVERSATION:
Christopher McLucas is an Omaha native who wants to build and uplift communities with creative writing. He has written creative fiction for fifteen years, publishing 3 anthologies, a children’s book and a sci-fi novel. Christopher enjoys knitting, crocheting, board games and walking aimlessly to think or procrastinate. He is currently a Navigator at the non-profit, The Asteroid House, which provides sequential art programming for adults ages 55 and better.
Ethan Dudney is an aspiring young author and a lifelong resident of Lincoln Ne. Currently in his sophomore year of high school attending the Arts and Humanities focus program, Ethan has been lucky enough to participate in the Bennett Martin library writers write, publish 3 of his works in the UNL, YWC online anthology, as well as an additional 2 in the A&H literary journal. Ethan has always been deeply connected with the arts and primarily enjoys writing horror stories, however is an avid fan of poetry. Ethan has also won a state level gold and national level silver key in the 2024 scholastics art and writing competition and is no doubt, a connoisseur of creativity.
PREVIOUS WRITERS:
John Price attended the University of Iowa, where he earned a BA in Religion, MFA in Nonfiction Writing, and PhD in English. He has authored five creative nonfiction books, often using humor to explore the wildish intersections of nature, family, community and spirit—with a special love for the prairies and oak-lands of his Midwestern home. These include All is Leaf: Essays and Transformations (U. of Iowa Press, 2022), Daddy Long legs: The Natural Education of a Father (Trumpeter/Shambhala, 2013), Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships (Merloyd Lawrence Books/Da Capo Press, 2008; Paperback, U. of Iowa Press), and Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary Journey into the American Grasslands (U. of Nebraska Press, 2004). He is also the editor of The Tallgrass Prairie Reader (U. of Iowa Press, 2014), the first historical collection of nature writing entirely dedicated to the beauty and fragility of the tallgrass region.
He lives with his family in the beautiful Loess Hills of western Iowa, and teaches at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Isabel Essink is a senior at Nebraska Wesleyan University. She is a part-time gymnastics coach and full-time student. She plans to graduate in May of 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in English and chemistry. Creative writing is a lifelong passion she plans to continue both personally and professionally into and after graduate school. She has been involved in NWU’s literary and visual arts journal The Flintlock for two consecutive years, during which the journal has published her work and she has served on the staff as poetry editor. Isabel writes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.