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 20, 2025. The Plains Writers Series is held several times a year to bring attention to the prose and poetry of Great Plains writers through reading and interacting with area audiences.
This Plains Writers Series will feature Charles Peek and Shyla Shehan. The reading will begin at 2 p.m. in the lounge on the second floor of the Humanities Building at Wayne State College. This event will be live-streamed on the Plains Writers Series Facebook page.
Following the Plains Writers Series will be Poetry Slam 51. The slam will be held at the Max Bar and Grill in downtown Wayne, NE, starting at 7:00 p.m., with registration starting at 6:30 p.m. Slam participants need three original poems and $5 registration fee. All events are free and open to the public.
ABOUT THE READERS:
Charles Peek’s poetry collection includes a Wayne State College Press chapbook, Where We’ve Managed Somehow to Be (2014), Breezes on Their Way to Being Winds (2015 by Finishing Line Press, selected for Talking Books and awarded the 2016 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry), and Nebraska—Conflicting Reports (Prairie Art Brothers 2020). One of his poems appeared in 2017 in Ted Kooser’s “This American Life in Poetry.” He has been invited to read in Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Wisconsin, Maine, Vermont (Breadloaf), Mississippi, Missouri, China, Spain, Italy, and France. He led the Heartland Emmy Award-winning program “Prayers for the People: Carl Sandburg’s Poetry and Songs” and performed on stages for local theater groups and performance centers. As Professor Emeritus at the University of Nebraska Kearney, a Fulbright Scholar (China 2005, 2008), and winner of the Nebraska Center for the Book’s Mildred Bennett Award for fostering the literary arts, Peek has actively given presentations for the Willa Cather Foundation, of which he served as President on the board. He also has interests in Faulkner, Hemingway, and the Harlem Renaissance. Peek has served on the last three State Poet selection committees, has frequently been invited to read at the Buffalo Commons Storytelling and Music Festival and the Kearney Storytelling Festival, and continues to teach at the Senior College of Central Nebraska, write, and maintain his monthly blog at CPeek.WordPress.Com.
Shyla Ann Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska, where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has been featured in The Pinch, Moon City Review, Midwest Quarterly, Summerset Review, and elsewhere, and her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She’s co-founder and EIC of The Good Life Review and lives in Omaha with her husband Jim, children Cooper and Zoey, and their three cats, Kayla, Doug, and Gus. Mining the Gap (WSC Press, 2025) is her first full-length poetry collection.
