2023 Festival Authors & Programs
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| Joy Castro | Dana Fritz | Matt Mason | Carla Ketner | Prairie Trout Writers Group | The String Beans | Prime Time Family Reading |
Joy Castro
Joy Castro is the award-winning author of eight books, including Flight Risk, a finalist for a 2022 International Thriller Award;
the post-Katrina New Orleans
literary thrillers Hell or High Water, which received the Nebraska Book Award. A former Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University, she is currently
the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies (Latinx Studies) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she directs the Institute for Ethnic Studies. Her latest novel One Brillant Flame is an enthralling historical novel, inspired by actual events of the 1886 Great Fire of Key West.
Learn more...
Dana Fritz
Dana Fritz uses photography to investigate the ways we shape and represent the natural world in cultivated and constructed landscapes.
She holds a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Arizona State University. Fritz is currently Hixson-Lied Professor of Art in the School of Art, Art History & Design
at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The University of Nebraska Press published Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape in 2023. 
It traces the evolution of the Bessey Ranger District and Nursery of the Nebraska National Forest and Grasslands.
Fritz’s contemporary photographs of this unique ecosystem, with provocative environmental essays, maps, and historical photographs from the U.S. Forest Service archives, illuminate the complex environmental and natural history of the site, especially as it relates to built environments, land use, and climate change.
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Matt Mason
Matt Mason is the Nebraska State Poet and, through the US State Department, has run poetry programs in Botswana, Romania, Nepal and Belarus. Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found in The New York Times, on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry and more. Mason’s 4th book, At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros, was released by The Old Mill Press in 2022. Matt will be hosting a Slam Poetry Showcase featuring Greg Harries, Trac Schacht, Biance Swift, and Noni Williams. Learn more...
Carla Ketner
Carla Ketner is the owner and manager of Chapters Books & Gifts in Seward, Nebraska.
She is a former elementary school teacher and instructor of college-level children’s literature courses. Ted Kooser: More Than a Local Wonder is
her first picture book. When not reading, writing, or connecting readers with books, she is likely to be walking her grand-dog, looking up the names
of local wildflowers, baking anything that lists chocolate as an ingredient, or traveling with friends and family. She and her husband have two grown sons.
Prairie Trout
Nebraska Authors and Poets Mary Pipher, Twyla Hansen, Karen Shoemaker, Pam Barger, and Marge Saiser. The Prairie Trout writing group includes award-winning authors Pam Barger, Twyla Hansen, Mary Pipher, Marge Saiser and Karen Shoemaker. For this event, they will read individually from their works and address questions about the impact of the group and the evolution of their work together.
Related Links
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National Book Festival — Washington, DC
Sponsors
| MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS | SUPPORTING SPONSOR | KEY SPONSOR |
| Lincoln Journal Star KFOR 10/11 |
Nebraska Center for the Book Nebraska Library Commission University of Nebraska Press Lincoln City Libraries Humanities Nebraska |
Friends of the University of Nebraska Press Union Bank |
Keep up with the Festival at https://www.facebook.com/NebraskaBookFestival
