Recent Events

Join authors and UNL graduate students Jamaica Baldwin, Jessica Poli, and Kimberly Reyes in celebrating the publication of their new books. 

Sherrie Flick is the author of a novel and two short story collections. Her collection Thank Your Lucky Stars (Autumn House Press) is now an audio book. Adina Verson performed her story “Heidi is Dead,” from her debut collection Whiskey, Etc.(Autumn House Press) for NPR’s December 2022 Selected Shorts. New work appears in Ploughshares, New England Review, and Booth. She is a senior editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, served as series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018 (Braddock Avenue Books), and co-edited the anthology Flash Fiction America (February 2023, W. W. Norton). 

Author and historian Keith Walton will share his new book, The Last Full Measure: From America's Heartland to the Battlefields of Vietnam - Remembering the Fallen from One Nebraska Town.

Terese Svoboda has won the Guggenheim, the Bobst Prize in fiction, the Iowa Poetry Prize, an NEH translation grant, the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, a Jerome Foundation video prize, the O. Henry Award for the short story, and a Pushcart Prize for the essay. Her opera WET premiered at L.A.'s Disney Hall.  Roxy and Coco, her 20th book, will be published in 2024.

Dog on Fire is the fourth book she's published in five years in four genres, the others being Theatrix: Poetry Plays (poetry, Anhinga Press) “A tour de force collection that explodes our notion of the fourth wall” – Virginia Konchan; Great American Desert (stories, Mad Creek Books) "Great  American  Desert is a devious and extraordinary new collection of stories from one of our best writers, Terese Svoboda." -- Karen Russell; and Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet (biography, Schaffner Press) “Magisterial” – Washington Post.

For more information see On Site Events: Third Thursdays. 

Lee Martin is the author of the novels, The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; River of Heaven; Quakertown; Break the Skin; Late One Night, and Yours, Jean. His memoirs are Gone the Hard Road, From Our House, Turning Bones, and Such a Life.  He is also the author of two short story collections, The Least You Need To Know, and The Mutual UFO Network, as well as a craft book. Telling Stories: The Craft of Narrative and the Writing Life. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Glimmer Train, The Best American Essays, and The Best American Mystery Stories. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, where he is a College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor, and where he was also the winner of the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching. 

TAKE UP SPACE is in Lincoln Thursday, February 2,  6-7:30 pm! This teen open mic night is designed for writers aged 13-19 to share their art and support each other. Plus, there will be FREE PIZZA! 

"Accomplished poet Christing Stewart- Nunez's first book of essays lets us travel, decipher secrets, feel fabric through our fingers in Turkish markets, watch Holden through his young mother's eyes. . . The essays glow golden under our eyes as the writer conjures meaning from life to life. This book is a triumph -- for her and for readers."   -- Hilda Raz

Christine Stewart-Nuñez is the author and editor of several books of poetry, including The Poet & The Architect (2021), Untrussed (2016) and Bluewords Greening (2016), winner of the 2018 Whirling Prize. Chrysopoeia: Essays of Language, Love, and Place, new from Stephen F. Austin State University Press, is her first book of prose. Essays in Chrysopoeia appeared in North American Review, Shenandoah, and The Pinch among other magazines, and several earned notable listings and/or awards. Christine served as South Dakota’s poet laureate from 2019-2021, and her work has been the basis for international, cross-artistic collaborations with colleagues in music, dance, visual art, and architecture. With ties to Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, Christine now lives in Winnipeg where she teaches in women’s and gender studies at the University of Manitoba. christinestewartnunez.com.   

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!

William Trowbridge will read from his latest poetry collection Call Me Fool. He will be joined by a number of local poets who have worked with William over the years.  Like many of Bill's readings, this is sure to be a lively literary event. Come prepared to laugh, and maybe even cry a little. 

Call Me Fool, William Trowbridge’s ninth poetry collection, Call Me Fool, came out from Red Hen Press in September. Over 550 of his poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines and in more than 50 anthologies and textbooks. He is a faculty mentor in the University of Nebraska-Omaha Low-residency MFA in Writing Program and was Poet Laureate of Missouri from 2012 to 2016. For more information, see his website at williamtrowbridge.net.

Hadara Bar-Nadav is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, the Lucille Medwick Award from the Poetry Society of America, and other honors.  Her award-winning books include The Singing Pills (Four Way Books, forthcoming), awarded the Levis Prize; The New Nudity (Saturnalia Books, 2017); Lullaby (with Exit Sign) (Saturnalia Books, 2013), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; The Frame Called Ruin (New Issues, 2012), Editor’s Selection/Runner Up for the Green Rose Prize; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), awarded the Margie Book Prize.  She is also the author of two chapbooks, Fountain and Furnace (Tupelo Press, 2015), awarded the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/Green Tower Press 2010), awarded the Midwest Poets Series Prize.  In addition, she is co-author with Michelle Boisseau of the best-selling textbook Writing Poems, 8^th ed. (Pearson, 2011).  Her poems and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Believer, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and elsewhere.  She is a Professor of English and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Welcome to NaNoWriMo Mondays @ Larksong where NaNoWriMo writers will be IN THE HOUSE! 

Larksong Writers Place will once again celebrate National Writers Month by serving as an official "Write In" space registered with nanowrimo.org. This year the organization has sanctioned in person events and Larksong is ready to welcome NaNoWriMo writers to gather in-house and write write write. 

Join with other brave souls who are determined to write a novel in the month of November. For three hours every Monday come in, pull up a chair and start writing. There'll be time to compare notes and strategize with other writers and of course there'll be time to WRITE!

Dan Chaon’s most recent book is Sleepwalk (2022.)  He is the author of six previous books, including Ill Will, a national bestseller, named one of the ten best books of 2017 by Publishers Weekly. Other works include the short story collection Stay Awake (2012), a finalist for the Story Prize; the national bestseller Await Your Reply; and Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in the Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize Anthologies, and the O. Henry Collection. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction and the Shirley Jackson Award, and he was the recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chaon, who grew up in western Nebraska, currently lives in Cleveland.

Interested in meeting and mingling with children's book writers and illustrators? The Nebraska Chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) will be hosting a social event at Larksong on October 15 from 1-4 pm. Larksong members are welcome to join to get to know the local "kidlit" community, ask questions about writing for kids, and learn more about SCBWI as an organization. Please register for this free event. 

In her luminous new memoir, Mary Pipher taps into a cultural moment to offer wisdom, hope, and insight into loss and change. Drawing from her expertise as a psychologist specializing in women, trauma, and the effect of the culture on our mental health, she looks at her own story in A Life in Light. 

Creative Journaling with a focus on turning a travel journal into a work of art. This class is an opportunity to learn how to take journaling to a whole new level! It's not just about words anymore. Join the artist and journal maker Catherine Griesen as she demonstrates creative journaling techniques and ideas that can help even the artistically challenged among us (I'm looking at me when I say that) turn a journal into a work of art with a personal story at its heart. 

Erin Flanagan's recent novel, Blackout (Thomas & Mercer), was an Amazon First Reads selection for June 2022. She is the author of the novel Deer Season (University of Nebraska Press), winner of the 2022 Edgar for Best First Novel by an American Author, as well as two short story collections with UNP. Erin is an English professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio and a regular book reviewer for Publishers Weekly. For more information about her and her writing, please visit www.erinflanagan.net or say hello on Twitter or Instagram at @erinlflanagan.

A journal is a powerful tool. Whether you write in a linen-covered notebook or on the white screen of your computer, your journal is a safe, private place for self-reflection, a place to record the night’s dreams, to speak with yourself about a life transition, to meditate on the joy of an hour by the lake. It is a place to get in touch with your subconscious mind, with your creative fire, with your heart, your challenges, your beliefs, your goals.