SAVE THE DATE... The 2015 Nebraska Book Festival will be held April 25 in Omaha.
Join us!
The next Nebraska Book Festival, Deliberate Shapes and Senses, will be held April 25-26, 2014, at the University of Nebraska Omaha Thompson Center in Omaha, Nebraska. The festival is free and open to everyone who wishes to meet, hear, and talk with a few of Nebraska's many talented authors who have published new works. All participating authors will answer questions from the audience and be available for book signings. View the program [PDF].
- Don Welch will give the keynote presentation.
- Participating authors will answer questions from the audience, be available for book signing, and attend the concluding reception.
- Writers will conduct writers workshops.
- The Nebraska Center for the Book will present the Mildred Bennett Award to an individual for significant contributions to fostering literary tradition in Nebraska.
- Organizations, publishers, and vendors will be present.
Keynote address
Activities begin Friday evening, April 25, with a keynote presentation by Nebraska native Don Welch, poet and author of "Gnomes" (2013) and "Travels" (2010). In 1980, Welch won the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, judged by William Stafford. He retired as Reynolds Poetry Professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, but he has recently been re-appointed to that post as Interim Reynolds Poetry Professor for 2012-2013.
Presenters
Saturday will include presentations by authors who will read and discuss their work:
- Lucy Adkins, Becky Breed: "Writing in Community: Say Goodbye to Writer's Block and Transform Your Life"
- David S. Atkinson: "The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes"
- Paul Dickey: "Wires Over the Home Place"
- Marcia Calhoun Forecki: "Blood of the White Bear"
- A.E. Fairfield: "The Polaris Effect"
- Nancy Isom: "A Name to Remember"
- Kent Krause: "Behind in the Count"
- Tosca Lee: "Iscariot"
- Kelly Madigan: "The Edge of Known Things"
- John Price: "Daddy Long Legs: The Natural Education of a Father"
- Jim Reisdorff: "Un-Driving the Gold Spike"
- Marge Saiser: "Losing the Ring in the River"
- Mary K. Stillwell: "Fallen Angels, The Life & Poetry of Ted Kooser"
- Lisa Kovanda, Brian Thomas: "Modified Flight Plan"
- Benjamin Vogt: "Afterimage"
- Darrell Wendt: "Confessions of a Railroad Crew Van Driver"
- Eileen Wirth: "From Society Page to Front Page: Nebraska Women in Journalism"
Writing workshops
The festival will include fiction and prose workshops with opportunities for writers to discuss their craft and receive feedback from award-winning authors. Presenters are Karen Shoemaker and Tosca Lee.
Seven Doctors Project
Founded by poet Steve Langan in 2008, the Seven Doctors Project, a Nebraska Writers Collective program, assists physicians, healthcare workers, and members of the broader professional community in the exploration of the creative process through study and practice of creative writing. This is accomplished through interactive workshops conducted by local writers and poets in a variety of settings throughout the community. In this presentation, Langan and 7DP participants will share some work from the recent sessions...and provide an interactive writing assignment, "Abstraction to Image," as a way for each attendee to begin writing a poem.
Map & parking
The Festival will be held at the University of Nebraska Omaha Thompson Center. All UNO lots are open for parking during the Festival events.
Sponsors
- Nebraska Center for the Book
- Humanities Nebraska
- Nebraska Library Commission
- Omaha Public Library
- College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Nebraska Omaha
- Nebraska Cultural Endowment