Presenters
Paul Amandes
Paul Amandes is the Associate Chairperson of the
Theatre Department at Columbia College Chicago. He is a
playwright, actor, director, singer, guitarist, and
songwriter. He co-adapted (with Virginia Smith) and
wrote original songs for Local Wonders, which he produced
professionally & was the featured performer in 2010-11. He
and Virginia have collaborated on many plays including Romeo
and Juliet, Judevine, The Little Humpback Horse, and Female
Transport. His play This Last Little Christmas is
currently in development and Trouble Shoot, commissioned to
be produced this summer by the Theater Within of
Indianapolis, will also be performed in Chicago in 2012.
Paul will participate in the Keynote Panel.
Sue Baumann (writing as Laura Landon)
More than Willing
(The Wild Rose Press)
Shattered Dreams
(Prairie Muse Publishing)
When Love Is Enough (Prairie Muse
Publishing)
Sue Baumann (aka Laura Landon) enjoyed ten years as a
high school music teacher and nine years making sundaes and
malts in her very own ice cream shop, but once she penned her
first novel, she closed up shop to spend every free minute
writing. Since she started writing, she’s written more than a
dozen Victorian historicals. Her dream of being published became
a reality in 2010, when she saw three of her novels achieve
publication. She lives in a small Nebraska town and stays busy
penning new stories and getting more novels ready for
publication in 2011. Sue will read from and discuss her 2010
works.
Christopher Cartmill
The Nebraska Dispatches
(University of Nebraska Press)
Playwright, actor, and director, Christopher Cartmill
teaches at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New
York University. His plays have earned awards from the Kennedy
Center, Chicago’s Joseph Jefferson Committee, and the Los
Angeles Drama-Logues. Nebraska’s Lied Center for the Performing
Arts commissioned Christopher to write a play about Chief Standing
Bear, and the experience of writing this play, titled Home Land,
became the solo performance and memoir The Nebraska Dispatches
(University of Nebraska Press). He will read from and discuss his 2010 work.
Marilyn June Coffey
Mail-Order Kid: An
Orphan Train Rider’s Story
(“out West” Press)
Marilyn June Coffey is a best-selling, national
prize-winning, internationally published author of poetry and
prose.
Her “Pricksong” won a Pushcart Prize, Atlantic Monthly featured
her Great Plains Patchwork: A Memoir on its cover. Called a prose stylist, Marilyn trained as journalist (B.A.,
University of Nebraska, 1959) and creative writer (M.F.A.,
Brooklyn College, 1981). Her work has appeared in Australia,
Canada, Denmark, England, India, and Japan. Her latest book,
Mail-Order Kid (a best-seller on Amazon and Kindle) is a
biography of an orphan-train rider. Already it’s considered a
classic. Marilyn will read from and
discuss
her 2010 work.
Ted Kooser
Bag in the Wind
(Candlewick Press)
Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps (University of Nebraska Press)
Ted Kooser, a two-time U.S. Poet Laureate (2004–2006),
received his bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University and
his master’s degree in English from the University of Nebraska –
Lincoln. He is the author of 12 collections of poetry, including
Delights & Shadows, which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for
Poetry. His other honors include two National Endowment for the
Arts fellowships, a Pushcart Prize, and the Stanley Kunitz Prize
from Columbia University. He teaches in the English department
of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln as a Presidential Professor.
Ted will read from his 2010 book for children and participate in the Keynote
Panel.
Jeff Lacey
Jeff Lacey completed his bachelor’s degree in philosophy
and English
at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and his master’s
degree in English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Recently, his poetry has appeared in publications such as The Hiram Review, Nebraska Life Magazine,
Christianity and Literature, and The 2011 Nebraska Poet’s Calendar.
He was the editor for The Loren Eiseley Reader Teacher’s Guide.
A writing teacher who lives in Ralston, Nebraska, Jeff helps
direct the Omaha Metro Area High School Poetry Festival, and has
presented at numerous poetry workshops. His first book of
poetry, Keep Going, will be published this year. He is a writers’
workshop facilitator.
Desmond LaVelle
Thirteen Cats LaVelle
(Lulu)
Desmond LaVelle is a longtime advertising copywriter. In
his experience, he found that billboards and bus benches were
rarely big enough to tell really great stories. While crafting
Super Bowl commercials and Sunday circulars, LaVelle began
writing his literary debut, Thirteen Cats LaVelle. LaVelle grew
up in Omaha, Nebraska and studied Journalism at the University
of Kansas. He moved to Chicago immediately after graduation and,
after a short decade spent riding the elevated train, traveled
west to Sausalito. A Midwesterner at heart, living in beautiful
California gave him an overwhelming feeling of guilt. He
currently resides in Chicago. Again. He will read from his 2010
work.
Matt Mason
Matt Mason received his MA in English from the Creative
Writing Workshop at the University of California at Davis in
1994, then returned to Omaha, where he works to promote public
poetry readings and poetry readers as executive director of the
Nebraska Writers Collective and through PoetryMenu.com, an
online listing of poetry events. Matt’s first book of poetry, Things We Don’t
Know, We Don’t Know, won the 2007 Nebraska Book Award for
Poetry and was a Contemporary Poetry Best Seller. He runs the
monthly poetry slam and open mic at the Omaha Healing Arts
Center and was on 5 poetry slam teams at the National Poetry
Slam. Matt has helped with poetry events for bookstores, high
schools, junior highs, colleges, libraries in the U.S. as well
as in Nepal and Belarus through the U.S. State Department. He is a writers’ workshop facilitator
and coordinator fo the morning activities at the Nebraska Book
Festival.
Sarah McKinstry-Brown
Cradling Monsoons (Blue Light Press)
Winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize, Sarah
McKinstry-Brown studied poetry at the University of New Mexico,
the University of Sheffield, England, and the University of
Nebraska. In 2004, she won the Blue Light Poetry Prize for her
collection When You Are Born and has since been published
everywhere from West Virginia’s standardized tests to Omaha bus
benches. Sarah received her MFA in Poetry at the University of
Nebraska, and her creative thesis, Cradling Monsoons, won the
2010 Blue Light Book Award. She lives in Omaha with her husband,
the poet Matt Mason, and their two beautiful, feisty daughters. Sarah will read from
and discuss her 2010 work.
Jim Reese
Ghost on 3rd
(New York Quarterly Books)
Jim Reese is an Associate Professor of English; Director
of the Great Plains Writers’ Tour at Mount Marty College in
Yankton, South Dakota; and Editor-in-Chief of PADDLEFISH.
Reese’s poetry and prose have been widely published, most
recently in New York Quarterly, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner,
Paterson Literary Review, Louisiana Literature Review,
Connecticut Review, and elsewhere. His Pulitzer Prize
nominated poetry collection, ghost on 3rd
(New York Quarterly Books 2010), is riddled with love, latent
violence, humor and prison life. Reese has been the National Endowment for the Arts’
Writer-in-Residence at the Yankton Federal Prison Camp since
2008. He will facilitate a writers’
workshop and will read from and discuss his 2010 work.
Marjorie Saiser
Beside You at the Stoplight
(The Backwaters Press)
Rooms
(Puddinghouse Publications)
Marjorie Saiser was
named Distinguished Artist in Poetry in 2009 by the Nebraska
Arts Council. Her awards include the Little Blue Stem Award, the
Nebraska Book Award, the Literary Heritage Award, and the
Vreelands Award. Her poems have been published in Prairie
Schooner, Field, Georgia Review, Cimarron Review, CrazyHorse,
Cream City Review, and have been featured on “The Writer’s
Almanac” and Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry.” Marjorie will
read from and discuss
her 2010 works.
Timothy Schaffert
Timothy Schaffert is the author of four novels, most
recently The Coffins of Little Hope. His work has been a
Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a New
York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and an Indie Next “Great
Reads” pick
from the American Booksellers Association. He teaches creative
writing and literature at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
directs the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference, and serves as
digital development editor for Prairie Schooner, a literary
journal. He is also the director/founder of the (downtown) omaha
lit fest. He is a writers’
workshop facilitator.
Roy Scheele
A Far Allegiance (The Backwaters Press)
Roy Scheele is a poet who has been published in The
Sewanee Review, Poetry Northwest, Poetry, Prairie Schooner,
Commonweal, and many other places. He
has published profiles of/interviews with Gwendolyn Brooks,
Hayden Carruth, W.R. Moses, Susan Starr Richards and W.D.
Snodgrass in Poets &
Writers, Verse, and other magazines. He is Professor of English, poet-in-residence, and
director of creative writing at Doane College in Crete,
Nebraska. Roy will read from and discuss his 2010 work.
Barbara Schmitz
What Bob Says (Pudding House Press)
Barbara Schmitz is the author of How Much Our Dancing
Has Improved (The Backwaters Press), which won the 2005 Nebraska
Center for the Book Award for poetry, and How to Get Out of the
Body (Sandhills Press). Her poem “Uniforms” appeared in South
Dakota Review and will be featured in Ted Kooser’s newspaper column
“American Life in Poetry.” Barbara was a Writer-in-Residence at
the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, NM, and won a Nebraska Arts
Council Award in 1997. She has received
Emeritus Status from Northeast Community College, where she taught
creative writing, literature and coordinated the Visiting
Writers Series for thirty years. Barbara will read from and
discuss her 2010 work.
Virginia Smith
Virginia Smith is an Associate Professor at the
University of Nebraska’s main campus in Lincoln. She teaches
acting and directing, and has been the Artistic Director of the
Nebraska Repertory Theatre (NRT) since 2005. She also heads the
M.F.A. program in Directing for Stage and Screen and the B.A.
undergraduate emphasis in Directing and Management. She became
part of the theatre faculty at UNL in the fall of 2000 after
sixteen years working as a professional in Chicago. In December
of 2010, Local Wonders, a play with music, played in Chicago at
Chicago Dramatists under Virginia’s direction. She co-adapted
this piece with Paul Amandes, who also wrote the music and some
of the lyrics, from poet Ted Kooser’s book Local Wonders:
Seasons in the Bohemian Alps. Virginia will participate in
the Keynote Panel.
James Solheim
Born Yesterday: The Diary of a Young Journalist
(Philomel/Penguin Young Readers)
A poet and children’s book author, James Solheim won the
Academy of American Poets Prize as a student at the University
of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His new book for children, Born
Yesterday, received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, which chose it as
one of the year’s ten best picture books. His work has appeared
in many literary magazines and won a Pushcart Prize. He’s also
the author of the children’s books It’s
Disgusting — and We Ate It! from Simon & Schuster. James will
read from and discuss his 2010 work.
Dwaine Spieker
Dwaine Spieker teaches British Literature, Composition,
and Creative Writing at Wayne High School in Wayne, Nebraska. After
growing up on a farm outside Elgin, Nebraska, at the eastern edge of
the sandhills, he attended the University of Nebraska at
Kearney, graduating in 1997. In 2001, he received his Master of
Arts in English from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, and
more recently has been the recipient of the Nebraska Book Award
for Poetry for Garden of Stars. He is a writers’ workshop
facilitator.
Mary Helen Stefaniak
The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia
(W.W. Norton & Co.)
Mary Helen Stefaniak’s second novel, The Cailiffs of
Baghdad, Georgia (W. W. Norton), has been awarded a 2011
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction. The Cailiffs of Baghdad,
Georgia was also selected by independent booksellers as an
Indie-Next “Great Read” in September 2010. Mary Helen’s first
novel, The Turk and My Mother, won the 2005 John Gardner Book
Award and has been translated into several languages. Her first
book, Self Storage and Other Stories, received the Banta Award
for Literary Excellence from the Wisconsin Library Association.
She is an Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at
Creighton University in Omaha.
She will read from and discuss her 2010 work.
Wendy Townley
Nerdy Thirty
(WriteLife)
Wendy Townley (@wtownley on Twitter) is an author,
blogger, and award-winning writer whose first book, Nerdy
Thirty, was published in 2010 by WriteLife. She fancies social
media, handwritten correspondence, NPR, and the Macintosh.
Townley earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the
University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2002, and will graduate this
year with a master’s degree in communication, also from the
University of Nebraska at Omaha. Visit
www.wendytownley.com
and www.nerdythirty.com
to learn more. Wendy will read from and discuss her 2010 work.
Willa Cather Foundation
At Willa Cather’s Tables: The Cather Foundation Cookbook; Ann Romines, Ed.
(Allen Press)
The Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational
Foundation (Willa Cather Foundation) was founded in 1955,
through the efforts of a small group of volunteers in Red Cloud,
Nebraska, led by Mildred R. Bennett. Today the Foundation is
directed by a thirty-member Board of Governors that includes
nationally recognized scholars, teachers, and business and
professional people from throughout the United States. The Willa
Cather Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to
preserving and promoting understanding and appreciation of the
life, time, settings, and work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Willa Cather. Willa Cather Foundation Board of Governors member
Lynette Krieger will read from and discuss this 2010 work.