Former Poet Laureate of Missouri and longtime writing mentor at UNO's MFA in Writing Program William Trowbridge headlines an evening of poetry reading along with Nebraska poets John Stevens Berry and Heidi Hermanson.
Will Trowbridge bring his’s eleventh poetry collection, Maintenance, will be out from Spartan Press in mid-November, 2025. Over 550 of his poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines and in more than 50 anthologies and textbooks. He was Poet Laureate of Missouri from 2012 to 2016.
He 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.
His poetry includes nine full collections: Maintenance, (Spartan Press 2025), 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].
His poems have appeared in more than 50 anthologies and textbooks, as well as in such periodicals as Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, The Georgia Review, Boulevard, The Southern Review, Columbia, Colorado Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Epoch, and New Letters.
He is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Northwest Missouri State University, where he was an editor of The Laurel Review/GreenTower Press from 1986 to 2004.
His interests are reading, travel, motorcycling, wine tasting, fine dining, and trying to keep the damn rabbits out of the hibiscus.
Heidi Hermanson is a first-generation Nebraskan. In 2010, she won the Omaha Public Library's annual poetry contest and performed her winning work accompanied by Silver Roots, a New York City-based violin and flute duo. A recipient of both the Nebraska Book Award and the Nebraska Arts Council Individual Fellowship, she aspires to found a library of towns that no longer exist, and learn dialects of the 17-year cicada. Her books are Waking to the Dream (Stephen Austin University Press, 2018) and Cocktails with God (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Upon finding herself with an abundance of time due to and after Covid-19, she is documenting and photographing nearby rivers and cemeteries.
John Stevens Berry is a storied trial lawyer and founder of Berry Law, and a decorated Vietnam veteran. He is the author of several books of poetry, memoir, and history. He received his first Academy of American Poets award in 1958. His latest book of poetry is Second Comings (2025) is about his experiences in Vietnam.
After graduating from the New Mexico Military Institute in 1956, Berry attended Stanford University for his bachelor’s degree in English. There, he learned from a legendary roster of American authors and poets and won awards from the Academy of American Poets in 1958 and 1959. In 1973, he published a book of his poems called The Darkness of Snow. He published Those Gallant Men: On Trial in Vietnam, in 1984, and authored a portion of Utilizing Forensic Science in Criminal Cases in 2011. John co-authored The Twelfth Victim: The Innocence of Caril Ann Fugate in the Starkweather Murder Rampage (2014), in which he presented the case for 14-year-old Caril Ann Fugate’s legal innocence for her part in the most prolific murder case in Nebraskan history. John was a featured author in the Ames Reading Series program in May 1988 and October 2014 and was honored by the Military Book Club in 1984 for his memoir on the Green Beret Affair.