Authors include Kiara Nicole Letcher, Todd Robinson, and Greg Kosmicki.
Wayne State College's Language and Literature Department, the School of Arts and Humanities, and the WSC Press are pleased to host the next installment of the 2024-25 Plains Writers Series on Thursday, March 6. The event will feature Kiara Nicole Letcher, Todd Robinson, and Greg Kosmicki.
The reading, free and open to the public, will begin at 2 p.m. in the second-floor lounge of the Humanities Building at Wayne State. This event will be livestreamed on the Plains Writers Series Facebook page.
Poetry Slam 50 will follow the Plains Writers Series. The slam will be held at 7 p.m. at the Max Bar and Grill in downtown Wayne. Registration begins at 6:30 p.m. for slam participants who need to bring three original poems and the $5 registration fee. The slam is also free and open to the public. For more information, visit the WSC Press website.
About the Readers
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 earned her master of fine arts degree from the University of Nebraska-Omaha and previously served as a board member for the Nebraska Writer’s Collective. She was the 2024 keynote speaker for the Nebraska Scholastic Writing Awards and a Nebraska State Poet nominee. For more information about Letcher, visit her website or @kiaranicolebang on Instagram.
Todd Robinson is the author of two poetry collections, “Mass for Shut-Ins (University of Nebraska Press, 2018),” and “Note at Heart Rock (Main Street Rag Press, 2012).” His poems and prose have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Rattle, The Adroit Journal, North American Review, and South Dakota Review. He is an assistant professor in the Writer's Workshop at the University of Nebraska-Omaha and caregiver to his partner, a disabled physician.
Greg Kosmicki is a retired social services worker who lives with his wife, Debbie, in Omaha. He earned his master’s degree in English with a Creative Thesis from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has been awarded two Artist’s Fellowships from the Nebraska Arts Council, and his 2016 book from Logan House Press, “It’s as Good Here as it Gets Anywhere,” was a Finalist for the 2017 High Plains Book Award. Several of his poems have been read on Writer’s Almanac. His poems have been published since the late 1970s in literary magazines such as Paris Review, New Letters, The Briar Cliff Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New York Quarterly, and many others. Author of eight chapbooks and six previous books of poetry, his seventh collection, “The Dog Has No Answers,” was published in the fall of 2024 by Main Street Rag Publishing. He founded The Backwaters Press and managed it for 20 years, until it was passed along to The University of Nebraska Press as an imprint. As well as working in poetry, Kosmicki is an abstract expressionist painter.
About the Plains Writers Series
The Plains Writers Series is held several times a year at Wayne State and has been an integral part of the college’s history since 1977. This reading series generally features Great Plains authors and artists in a one or two-day event that is free and open to the public. The Plains Writers Series brings attention to the prose and poetry of Great Plains writers through reading and interacting with area audiences.
The Plains Writers Series provides a forum for Nebraska’s contemporary writers and poets to share their work with Nebraska readers. The content of the project is literature, especially that of rural Nebraska. Literature will be the entire focus of the series throughout the day in the form of readings, questions and answer sessions, one-on-one conversations between the audience members, and the authors presenting their work. Following the readings, a poetry or fiction slam is held in downtown Wayne.
For more information about the Plains Writers Series, contact Chad Christensen, managing editor of the WSC Press and director of the Plains Writers Series, at [email protected] or 402-375-7118, or visit the WSC Press website.