Wayne State College’s Language and Literature Department, the School of Arts and Humanities and the WSC Press are pleased to hold this fall’s Plains Writers Series on Thursday, November 17, 2016. The Plains Writers Series is held several times a year in an attempt to bring attention to the prose and poetry of local Great Plains writers through reading and interacting with area audiences.

This fall’s Plains Writers Series will highlight four authors: David Wyatt, Greg Kosmicki, Erik Campbell, and William Trowbridge. The authors will share selected pieces of their recent works in the lounge on the second floor of the Humanities Building at Wayne State College at 1:00 pm and again at 2:00 pm.

• 1:00 pm – David Wyatt and Greg Kosmicki
• 2:00 pm – Erik Campbell and William Trowbridge

Following the Plains Writers Series will be Poetry Slam XXXVI. The poetry slam will be held at The Max Bar and Grill in downtown Wayne, NE starting at 7:00 pm, with registration starting at 6:00 pm. If anyone would like to participate in the slam they will need 4 original poems and $5 for registration at the door. All events are free and open to the public.

AUTHOR BIOS:

DAVID WYATT was born in Southern California a year before the end of World War II, spending his childhood and early twenties in the Golden State, an agricultural and horticultural paradise well into the Fifties. Before and after time in the US Army in the mid-Sixties, Wyatt attended San Diego State, the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and the University of Oregon, where he held a graduate teaching fellowship in creative writing. He has also lived in Illinois, Long Island and Seattle, working (and not working) various jobs. He has been employed at UNO’s Criss Library since 1996. Wyatt was awarded a Distinguished Merit Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council in 2006, and won the inaugural Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from The Georgia Review in 2013. He has published poems in ABZ, The Christian Science Monitor, Prairie Schooner, Natural Bridge, The Georgia Review and Poetry. He lives in Omaha with his wife, Susan. Gathering Place is his first full-length collection of poetry.

GREG KOSMICKI is a poet and retired social worker who lives in Omaha, Nebraska. He founded The Backwaters Press in 1997, which he now serves as Editor Emeritus. Greg’s poetry has been published in numerous magazines since 1975, both print and online, Some of his earliest publications were in Poetry NOW in 1975 and Paris Review, in 1977. Greg has continued to publish poems in literary journals including Briar Cliff Review, Chiron Review, Cimarron Review, Connecticut Review, Cortland Review, Dacotah Territory, Green Hills Literary Lantern, New Letters, Nimrod, Paris Review, Poetry East, Poetry NOW, Rattle, Smoking Poet, SolsticeLitMag, Paddlefish, and Windless Orchard. He received artist’s fellowships for his poetry from the Nebraska Arts Council 2000 and 2006. He is the author of four books and 8 chapbooks of poems. Two of the poems from his book from Word Press, Some Hero of the Past, and one poem from his chapbook from Pudding House Publications, New Route in the Dream, have been selected by Garrison Keillor and read by him on The Writer’s Almanac on Minnesota Public Radio. His newest book, It’s as Good Here as it Gets Anywhere, was published in November 2016 by WSC Press. A new collection, Leaving Things Unfinished: Forty-some Years of Poems is due out in 2017 from Sandhills Press.

ERIK CAMPBELL is a native Nebraskan and former English teacher turned technical writer. His poems and essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Massachusetts Review, New Delta Review, Tin House, Nimrod, Rattle, and other journals. His essay, “Shirtless Days,” was a finalist for the 2004 Iowa Award in Literary Nonfiction, and he was nominated for a 2005 Pushcart Prize in poetry. His first full-length collection of poems, Arguments for Stillness, was published by Curbstone Press in April 2006 in a Curbstone/Rattle edition. His most recent book, The Corpse Pose, was published in May of 2016 by Red Hen Press.

WILLIAM TROWBRIDGE’s graphic chapbook, Oldguy: Superhero, was published by Red Hen Press in March. His new full collection,Vanishing Point, is forthcoming from Red Hen in 2017. His other collections are Put This On, Please: New and Selected Poems, Ship of Fool, The Complete Book of Kong, Flickers, O Paradise, and Enter Dark Stranger. He is a faculty mentor in the University of Nebraska-Omaha Low-residency MFA in Writing Program and was Poet Laureate of Missouri from 2012 to 2016. For more information, see his website at williamtrowbridge.net.

WHEN: Thursday, November 17, 2016

WHERE: Humanities Building 2nd Floor Lounge, Wayne State College / SLAM @ Max Bar & Grill

TIME: PWS @ 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm / REGISTRATION @ 6:00 pm / SLAM @ 7:00 pm