Recent Events

Let’s kick off the Holiday Season with some fast-paced writing and short but powerful reading sessions! The format is simple. We alternate five-minute readings with 15-minute mini writing workshops that start with a craft talk and end with a writing prompt. Five readings, four workshops, so you’ll not only leave the event inspired but you’ll have some new writing too!

Second annual Larksong Speedwriting & Reading Watch Party - like a tailgate for literary folk. 

William Trowbridge holds a B.A. in Philosophy and an M.A. in English from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a PH.D. in English from Vanderbilt University.  He served as Poet Laureate of the State of Missouri from 2012-2016.

His poetry includes nine full collections: Call Me Fool, [Red Hen Press, fall 2022], Oldguy:Superhero—The Complete Collection, [Red Hen Press, 2019],  Vanishing Point, [Red Hen Press, April, 2017], Put This On, Please [Red Hen Press, 2014], Ship of Fool [Red Hen Press, 2011], The Complete Book of Kong [Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2003], Flickers, O Paradise, and Enter Dark Stranger [Universiy of Arkansas Press, 2000, 1995, 1989].  He has also published four chapbooks: Oldguy: Superhero, a graphic chapbook in the form of a comic book, [Red Hen, 2016], The Packing House Cantata [Camber Press, 2006], The Four Seasons [Red Dragonfly Press, 2001], and The Book of Kong [Iowa State University Press, 1986].

Terese Svoboda is an American poet, novelist, memoirist, short story writer, librettist, translator, biographer, critic and videomaker. 

Facilitated by professional writing instructors, these workshops sessions are focused on developing writing strategies and skills. Model texts are read and discussed by the group to help participants identify how good writing is built and to allow writing practice with immediate feedback. The range of works include fiction, poetry, and memoir. Writers develop a strong bond as they encourage each other.

Shanan Ballam survived a massive stroke in January 2022 which left her without speech and without the use of the entire right side of her body. She never quit writing poetry, though, and she was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Utah Original Writing Contest for her entry First Poems After the Stroke in October of 2022. Her poetry has recently appeared in Sugar House Review, Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, Kaleidoscope, and The Quarter(ly).

Her chapbook entitled “first poems after the stroke” was published by Finishing Line Press in May 2024.

Anna Monardo grew up in Pittsburgh, with strong ties to her Calabrian family, and her forthcoming memoir, After Italy: A Family Memoir of Arranged Marriage (Bordighera Press; May 14, 2024), is the story of her family’s immigration to the U.S. Excerpts were published in Creative Nonfiction, Hotel Amerika, Cimarron Review, More, Exquisite Pandemic, Fourth Genre, and Ovunque Siamo.

“I find the book prophetic, and the work of a mystic who is in touch with tellurian andhuman forces that remain hidden to the common person."—Alice-Catherine Carls, University of Tennesseeat Martin

Winner of the 2022 Moon City Short Fiction Award

Reveal Codes is a collection of short stories mapping the ways in which people, and other animals, read and misread, communicate and miscommunicate, mask and unmask, with and around one another. In the abandonware word processing program, WordPerfect, “reveal codes” is the command that reveals the coding behind the face of a document. The stories in this collection spiral around a (bio)semiology of the multiplicities of desire. In a series of pas de deux, or duets, the characters in these stories try to make themselves legible to family, friends, and lovers—revealing their messy patterns, their bare-faced vulnerabilities. These are stories that unfurl tentacles of longing made with language in an attempt to decode the illegibility of an incoherent and inchoate surrounding world.

This festival is a both a "(W)rite of Spring" event and "Get to Know Us" Party.

Come write, come listen, come play! 

The public is welcome! 

“Higgs-Coulthard delivers a gritty, emotionally nuanced read about an unhoused teen searching for his absent father. . . . Utilizing atmospherically tense prose and layered, moving characterizations, this melancholy novel showcases one teen struggling to cultivate a better life for himself while navigating financial precarity and personal betrayal.”—Publishers Weekly

"In the wellspring of creativity, there is sometimes a generosity that mirror’s the poet’s gift. It is the heart inside the heart, and so it is with Kate Gale. She gives out of what she feels was given to her so that we can all sit in the light of a greater gratitude."

—Afaa M. Weaver, author of Spirit Boxing

Dr. Kate Gale is Co-Founder and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review.  She teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska in Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction.

She is the author of seven books of poetry, including The Loneliest Girl, The Goldilocks Zone, Echo Light. Kate has also written six librettos including Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis, which had its world premiere October 2010 at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee, WI.

Elegant and elegiac, The Titanic Survivors Book Club is a dazzling ode to love, chance, and the transformative power of books to bring people together.

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.

Nebraska Poetry Society will pay the berth and meals

for the winner of the Qualifying Slam

to compete at the BlackBerry Peach National Slam Poetry Competition!

We will also help the winner fundraise to cover funds for hotel and flight. 

If you would like to donate to this cause, please do so through the QR Code.

Every dollar counts!

“Not since Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek have I felt so involved, as a reader, in ‘finding out what it all means.’ This is a beautifully written, un-put-downable book about language, love, and being alive, here, now.”

-- Gillian Clarke, Wales longest serving National Poet

Sweetheartland - 
“...a magical collection of soul-deep songs... the strength, perseverance, and determination inherent in the Midwest colors the lyrics of every song on the album. And the lyrics are a rich treasure trove of word-smithing of the highest order; the vulnerability and resolve of the characters in her songs are relatable and raw. Fleshed out with a rootsy, full-band sound, her songs soar, tiptoe, swing, and sway down a sometimes lonely, sometimes joyous, dusty trail through the big sky plains. It’s heady and heartwarming, melancholy and sad, engaging and inspiring, all at once.” -- Vents Magazine

Sue William Silverman’s Acetylene Torch Songs is a gift for creative nonfiction writers, and a guiding light: offering a holistic and hands-on approach to writing our memories, our obsessions, and ourselves; this is a gorgeous book of body and mind, of heart and soul. In the truest sense it’s also a torch: one we might carry with us as we write, as we dig into the dark corners of our lives, making our stories burn bright. —Melissa Faliveno, author of TOMBOYLAND