Fall 2024 Writer's Workshop Reading Series
We welcome you to the Fall 2024 Reading Series! It's a great line up of author's and writer's to inspire. All events are free and open to the public.
Lee Ann Roripaugh | Wed | Sept 18 | 7:30p | UNO Art Gallery
Lee Ann Roripaugh (she/they) is a biracial Nisei and the author of five volumes of poetry, most recently tsunami vs. the fukushima 50 (Milkweed Editions, 2019), which was named a “Best Book of 2019” by the New York Public Library, selected as a poetry Finalist in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards, cited as a Society of Midland Authors 2020 Honoree in Poetry, and was named one of the “50 Must-Read Poetry Collections in 2019” by Book Riot. Her collection of fiction, Reveal Codes, was selected as winner of the Moon City Press Short Fiction Award and published by Moon City Press in late 2023, and their chapbook, #stringofbeads, a winner in the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition, was released from Diode Press in 2023. She was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004, and a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series. The South Dakota State Poet Laureate from 2015-2019, Roripaugh is a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where they serve as Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review. They also teach in UNO’s Low-Residency MFA program.
John Copenhaver | Wed | Sept 25 | 7:30p | UNO Art Gallery
John Copenhaver’s historical crime novel, Dodging and Burning, won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel and garnered Anthony, Strand Critics, Barry, and Lambda Literary Award nominations. His second novel, The Savage Kind, won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery and was a finalist for Left Coast Crime’s Best Historical Mystery. He cohosts on the House of Mystery Radio Show, is the six-time recipient of Artist Fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. For years, he wrote a crime fiction review column for Lambda Literary called “Blacklight.” He’s a Larry Neal awardee, and his work has appeared in CrimeReads, Electric Lit, The Gay and Lesbian Review, PANK, and others. He teaches fiction writing and literature at Virginia Commonwealth University and is a faculty mentor in the University of Nebraska’s Low-Residency MFA program. His third novel, Hall of Mirrors, the sequel to The Savage Kind, is out now.
Lisa Fay Coutley | Wed | Oct 2 | 7:30p | Criss Library
Lisa Fay Coutley is the author of HOST (Wisconsin Poetry Series, 2024), tether (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), Errata (Southern Illinois University, 2015), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, In the Carnival of Breathing (BLP, 2011), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition, and Small Girl: Micromemoirs (Harbor Editions, 2024). She is also the editor of the grief anthology In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (BLP, 2024). Her poetry has been awarded an NEA Fellowship, an Academy of American Poets Levis Prize, chosen by Dana Levin, and the 2021 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, selected by Natalie Diaz. Recent prose & poetry appears in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Barrelhouse, Brevity, Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and on The Slowdown. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry & CNF in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Anna Monardo | Wed | Oct 16 | 7:30p | UNO Art Gallery
Anna Monardo grew up in Pittsburgh, with strong ties to her Calabrian family; her memoir, After Italy: A Family Memoir of Arranged Marriage (Bordighera Press) is the story of her family’s immigration to the U.S. Excerpts were published in the New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, Hotel Amerika, Cimarron Review, and more. After Italy is the factual retelling of the family story at the heart of her first novel, The Courtyard of Dreams (Doubleday), which was translated into German, Norwegian, and Danish, nominated for a PEN/Hemingway Award and recommended for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Her second novel, Falling In Love with Natassia (Doubleday), included excerpts first published in Prairie Schooner and nominated for Pushcart Prizes. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the Djerassi Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, as well as three fellowships from the Nebraska Arts Council, she is Professor Emeritus in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Liz Kay | Wed | Oct 30 | 7:30p | UNO Art Gallery
Liz Kay holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska, where she was the recipient of both an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Wendy Fort Foundation Prize for exemplary work in poetry. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Beloit Poetry Journal, RHINO, Nimrod, Willow Springs, The New York Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, Redactions, and Sugar House Review. She is the author of Something to Help Me Sleep {dancing girl press}, The Witch Tells The Story And Makes It True (Quarter Press), and Monsters: A Love Story (G. P. Putnam’s Sons).
Michael Hofacre | Wed | Nov 13 | 7:30p | Benson Theater
Michael Hofacre is a film editor living in Los Angeles. He has been part of the editing team on over 50 film, television, and documentary projects, working alongside directors such as Danny DeVito, Jodie Foster, Milos Forman, Michael Mann, Tran Anh Hung, Judd Apatow and Adam McKay. Independent films include The Performance, Winter in the Blood, Frankie Go Boom, and Shelter. Documentaries include Oceania, Soros, Political Animals, and Walking Man. He also directs theatre for the Central Coast Shakespeare Festival and his writing has been rejected by The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Cahiers du Cinema. He studied theatre at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.