Join Larksong Writers Place for our annual holiday tradition! This fast-paced virtual event brings together NINE authors, playwrights, and poets for a series of five readings and four workshops. 90 jam-packed minutes will FLY!

You'll leave with the beginnings of four different pieces of writing along with plenty of inspiration for more. This is the perfect event to boost your writing during the winter months.

Get ready to sprint in one of our most fun events of the entire year!

This year, we bring together another fantastic line-up of authors from a diverse set of backgrounds:

Presenters:

Amy Hassinger is the author of three novels: Nina: Adolescence, The Priest's Madonna, and After the Dam. Her writing has been translated into Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, and Indonesian and has won awards from Creative Nonfiction, Publisher’s Weekly, American Best Book Awards, the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), and the Illinois Arts Council. Her non-fiction has appeared in venues such as The New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and, most recently, Blackbird. She earned her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois.

Be sure to catch Amy in June 2027 when she will feature as our First Friday reader!

Ángel García, the proud son of Mexican immigrants, is the author of Indifferent Cities (Tupelo Press), winner of a Helena Whitehill Book award, and Teeth Never Sleep (University of Arkansas Press), recipient of a CantoMundo Poetry Prize, an American Book Award, and finalist for a PEN America Open Book Award and a Kate Tufts Award. His work has been published in the American Poetry Review, McSweeney's, Crab Orchard Review, Huizache, The Acentos Review, and most recently in Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing and Copper Nickel. The recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Vermont Studio Center, and MacDowell, he is currently an associate professor of English and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Find Ángel on Instagram @buffalopoet. Click here to purchase Indifferent Cities.

Ángel will join us as our First Friday reader in December 2026!

Dominic Williams has been involved with the arts, particularly the language arts, since completing his post-graduate diploma in Bilingual Studies in 2002. He has been responsible for the promotion of Welsh Writing in English on a national level while in post at the Welsh Books Council. He has worked in marketing as the director with Parthian Books, Wales' most dynamic literary publisher. Since 2010, he has been deeply engaged in the arts in Wales and abroad, establishing, developing, supporting and leading international creative networks and communities across the globe. This work has been a combination of professional, voluntary and project-led work. Examples include the European-funded €1.6 million Wales/Ireland Coracle project on behalf of the University of Wales; a partner in the Disability Arts Cymru; the Ni Chawn ein Delau project with Portuguese and Swedish partners; and recently the delivery of the ACW-funded Press Speak Not Delete project, creating a hybrid of physical performance and digital channels to develop a more diverse and accessible arts sector. He has spent 15 years nurturing, creating platforms for and broadening the international horizons of creative individuals.

Winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize and three Nebraska Book Awards, Sarah McKinstry-Brown has been a working writer since 2002, when she sold everything she owned except what could fit in a single suitcase and left her hometown of Albuquerque to embark on a cross-country reading tour via the slam performance poetry circuit.

Her second book of poetry, This Bright Darkness, is available from Black Lawrence Press. 

To learn more about her work, go to: www.hellosmb.com 

Readers:

Lin Marshall Brummels was raised on a dairy farm and honors those country roots boarding horses and gardening. She earned a BS from the University of Nebraska and a MS from Syracuse University. She is a licensed Nebraska counselor. She works in a mental health counseling private practice part-time, after retiring from forty years counseling Wayne State College students. She considers herself a late bloomer who began writing mid-life. Brummels has published poems in Poet Lore, San Pedro River Review, The Good Life Review, Oakwood, Plainsong, Nebraska Life, and others. Her chapbooks by Finishing Line Press are Cottonwood Strong and Hard Times. Books: A Quilted Landscape, and Gazin’ West (Scurfea Publishing), and The Last Yellow Rose (Sandhills Press). She has received two Nebraska Book Awards: Hard Times 2016, Book Award for Chapbooks. The Last Yellow Rose 2026 Honor Poetry Book Award. 

Find Lin online on FaceBook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Lin will join us for Writers in Conversation in March 2027!

Matt Mason served as the Nebraska State Poet from 2019-2024 and has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times and Matt has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found in Rattle, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, and in hundreds of other publications. Mason's 5th book, Rock Stars, was published by Button Poetry in 2023. Find more at: https://matt.midverse.com/

Pamela Carter Joern is a playwright and award-winning author. Her newest book is a collection of personal essays titled At the Corner of Past & Future, winner of a 2026 Nebraska Book Award. Previous publications include Toby's Last Resort; In Reach (Nebraska Book Award for Fiction/Short Story and finalist for a Minnesota Book Award); The Plain Sense of Things; Th eFloor of the Sky (Barns & Noble Discover Great New Writers designation, Nebraska Book Award, and an Alex Award). She has twice won a Tamarack Award for short fiction. She has published short stories and essays in various literary journals. She has written six plays that have been produced in the Twin Cities. She currently lives in Minneapolis with her husband, Brad.

Make sure you don't miss out on Pamela's First Friday Reading in April 2027!

S.L. Woeppel is the award-winning author of THE BUTCHER AND THE LIAR, a finalist for the 2026 Kirkus Indie Award, finalist for the 2026 Silver Falchion Award, and 2026 Nebraska Book Award winner. Her first novel, FLIPPING THE BIRDIE was a 2025 Booklife Prize finalist and Editor’s Pick. Woeppel writes across genres, but her stories always explore love, secrets, and the duality of human nature. 
 
Woeppel gets antsy being in one place too long, so she’s lived in various places across the United States, most recently moving from Chicago farther north for even more cold and snow. She has five great loves—family, writing, reading, travel, and municipal bonds. She has an embarrassingly large supply of those tacky souvenir spoons (like more than two hundred) that she keeps in a box in her closet. She can’t help it; she just keeps buying them every new place she goes. 

Woeppel will feature as Larksong's First Friday Reader in February 2027!

Zedeka Poindexter is a poet, performer, and teaching artist who believes in the power of words to build connection and spark reflection. As Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective, she leads workshops that help writers find their voice and draw inspiration from the world around them.