Nebraska Poets Reading Series

Mark Sanders is a Nebraska native, born in Creighton and raised on the eastern rim of the Sandhills at Ord.

 

Among his books of poetry are The Suicide (1988), Before We Lost Our Ways (1996), Here in the Big Empty (2006), Conditions of Grace: New and Selected Poems (2011), Landscapes, with Horses (2018), and In a Good Time (2019).  The latter two books received Nebraska Book Awards; Landscapes, with Horses was awarded the 2019 Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  

 

His edited works include A Sandhills Reader: 30 Years of Great Writing from the Great Plains and The Weight of the Weather: Regarding the Poetry of Ted Kooser, both recipients of the Nebraska Book Award, in 2016 and 2018 respectively.  

 

In 2007, he was awarded the Mildred Bennett Award for fostering Nebraska’s literary heritage.  His most recent book is Homecoming Parade:  Memoir  (2024), and his next book of poems, The Messiah Horse:  Poems 1988-2025, is forthcoming in 2027.  

 

He and his wife operate a small farm devoted to big dogs and horses in east Texas.

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FREE and Open to the Public

Kelly Madigan is a poet, essayist and conservation advocate living in the Loess Hills of western Iowa. She previously resided in Nebraska for over 30 years.

 

Her work has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Distinguished Artist Award from the Nebraska Arts Council.

 

In 2020, Kelly walked the entire length of the Loess Hills in Iowa in an effort to understand her landscape on foot. In 2013, she crossed the Nebraska panhandle on foot.

 

Her books include The Edge of Known Things (SFASU Press) and Getting Sober (McGraw-Hill).

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FREE and Open to the Public

Eamonn Wall is a native of Ireland who lived and wrote in Nebraska from 1992-2000 when he was also a Professor of English at Creighton University.

 

He is the author of twelve books, eight poetry collections and four prose works. His recent books are Conocimiento: Writing Irish Borderlands (Reimagining Ireland/Peter Lang, 2025) and My Aunts at Twilight Poker (Salmon Poetry, 2023).

 

He has received awards for his writing and service to the arts in the United States from the American Conference for Irish Studies; the City of St. Louis and the State of Missouri, and from the Irish Echo (New York) newspaper.

 

His poems, reviews, and essays have been published in The Irish Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Ireland Review and other publications.

 

He lives nowadays in St. Louis, Missouri, and returns frequently to Ireland. 

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FREE and Open to the Public

R.P. Smith continues to manage a century plus family cow calf ranch in Custer County Nebraska. The fifth and sixth generations are waiting in the wings but R.P. is still trying to get a great system figured out to make the transition a little easier for them. The best he has come up with “is keep punchin till I’m planted”. 

R.P. wrote his first piece of cowboy poetry 37 years ago. He has had the opportunity to travel to 18 states and Canada. He hosts a weekly radio program/podcast “Homegrown” which is accessible at rpsmith.us

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FREE and Open to the Public

Poetry Pause is a welcoming, low-pressure way to experience poetry in community.

Each month, we feature two local poets at different points in their writing lives—one seasoned and one emerging—who will share their work, talk with each other about poetry and the creative process, and answer questions from the audience.

This event is designed for everyone, whether you read poetry often or have never attended a poetry reading before. The atmosphere is light, conversational, and approachable, offering a chance to slow down, listen, and connect with poetry in a relaxed (and air conditioned) setting.

Come for the Art Walk, stay for a few poems, and enjoy an evening of creative connection inside one of Omaha’s most beautiful historic spaces.
 

September Poets:

​​Kiara Nicole Letcher is the author of Oxblood, (Agape Editions, 2024) and the chapbook Scream Queen (Orchard Street Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, The Corpus Callosum, Laurel Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, Querencia Press and Mulberry Literary, among other publications. She received her MFA from The University of Nebraska at Omaha and previously served as a Board Member for the Nebraska Writer’s Collective. She was the 2024 and 2025 Keynote Speaker for the Nebraska Scholastic Writing Awards and a Nebraska State Poet Nominee. You can find her at her website: kiaranicoleletcher.com or on Instagram kiaranicolebang.

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Tyler Michael Jacobs is the author of The Weight of Drought (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2025) and Building Brownville (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in West Branch, The Journal, Quarterly West, Grist, Phoebe, Passages North, Variant Literature, Plainsongs, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere. His poems have also been featured on Nebraska Public Media’s Friday LIVE. He received his MFA from Bowling Green State University.

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Anna Schmeer is a poet based in Kansas City, whose work has appeared in elementia, Milk Carton Press, Inlandia, and elsewhere. She is the founder of smudge press and the author of the chapbook BELLYUPANDBEGGINGTOBELOVED. She holds a BS in Psychology and English from Creighton University and is pursuing an MLIS from the University of Iowa. 

 

Nicole Stander is a poet pursuing an MFA in fiction with University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Calyx, ellipsis, and more. She resides in Omaha with her partner. 

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FREE and Open to the Public

Kiara Nicole Letcher is the author of Oxblood, (Agape Editions, 2024) and the chapbook Scream Queen (Orchard Street Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, Plainsongs Magazine, Solstice Literary Magazine, Querencia Press, Mulberry Literary and Laurel Review, among other publications.

 

She received her MFA from The University of Nebraska at Omaha and previously served as a Board Member for the Nebraska Writer’s Collective. She was the 2024 and 2025 Keynote Speaker for the Nebraska Scholastic Writing Awards and a Nebraska State Poet Nominee. You can find her at her website or on Instagram @kiaranicolebang.

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FREE and Open to the Public

Miles Waggener is the author of four collections of poetry: Phoenix Suites, Sky Harbor, Desert Center, and most recently Superstition Freeway, published by The Word Works of Washington DC. 

 

He has been the recipient of The Washington Prize as well as individual grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and the Nebraska Arts Council. 

 

His poems have appeared widely in such journals as The Antioch Review, Plume Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Cutbank, Gulfcoast, and Hayden’s Ferry Review.  

 

He coordinates the creative writing program at the University of Nebraska Omaha. 

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FREE and Open to the Public

Greg Kosmicki has published eight chapbooks and seven full-length collections of poetry with ten different presses. His most recent collection, The dog has no answers, was published in September, 2023, by Main Street Rag Publishing Co. His 2016 collection, It's As Good Here as it Gets Anywhere, from Logan House Press, was a finalist for the 2017 High Plains Book Award.

 

Individual poems of his have been published in Paris Review, New Letters, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Kansas Quarterly, Briar Cliff Review, Laurel Review, Poetry NOW, and many others. His poems have been selected to be read on "Writer's Almanac." He has twice been awarded an Artist's Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council for his poetry.

 

In 1998, he founded The Backwaters Press, which published more than 100 books under his direction, until it was given to the University of Nebraska Press in 2017 as an imprint of that press. The University press continues to offer The Backwaters Prize for poetry collections, which he started in 2000.

 

Greg also works creatively as an abstract painter. He and his wife of 52 years, Debbie, are retired and live in Omaha, Nebraska, where he continues to write and paint. 

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FREE and Open to the Public

Native of Ogallala, Terese Svoboda has published eight books of poetry, most recently Theatrix: Poetry Plays (Anhinga, 2021). Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares and many other magazines.

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FREE and Open to the Public

Ruth Williams is the author of a poetry collection, Flatlands (Black Lawrence Press), and two poetry chapbooks, Nursewifery (Jacar Press) and Conveyance (Dancing Girl Press).

 

Ruth has been a Fulbright scholar in South Korea and a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

 

Originally from Lincoln, Nebraska, Ruth lives in Savannah, Georgia where she is an Assistant Professor of English at Georgia Southern University. 

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FREE and Open to the Public