Nov 11, 2024 | Here, Minnesota, Nebraska
This is the longer version of “Of Sunflowers, and Hope, in Times of Drought,” which first appeared in the Here section of Issue 14, printed July 2023. It is late July 2021. I have driven my daughter an hour northwest to reach swathes of Minnesota sunflowers, the...
Feb 22, 2022 | Graves, Literary Landscapes, Nature, Nebraska, Novelists, Volume 7
Mari Sandoz Gravesite Sheridan County, Nebraska By C.J. Janovy It’s not easy to get to the final resting place of Nebraska writer Mari Sandoz, whose books, I’ll go ahead and argue, evoke one region of America as powerfully as William Faulkner’s portray another. Paying...
Oct 17, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Nebraska, Poets, Volume 6, Writers of Color
JAMES EMANUEL Alliance Public LibraryAlliance, Nebraska By Sean Stewart Alliance, Nebraska, does not remember James Emanuel. There is no plaque, no statue. His poetry is not assigned to high school students. Despite the lofty architecture of the public library and...
Oct 5, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Nature, Nebraska, Novelists, Volume 4
WILLA CATHER Glacier Creek PreserveOmaha, Nebraska By Conor Gearin “The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up.” One of Willa Cather’s most famous lines, from the 1918 novel My...
Oct 5, 2021 | Literary Landscapes, Nature, Nebraska, Poets, Volume 3
TED KOOSER Gravel RoadsSeward County, Nebraska By Matt Miller For all his stature as former U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser remains a poet of Nebraska, and so he is a poet of gravel roads. Consider “So This Is Nebraska,” his best-known poem about his home...
Sep 11, 2021 | Author Houses, Literary Landscapes, Nebraska, Novelists, Volume 1
Wright Morris Boyhood HomeCentral City, Nebraska By Nathan Tye For Wright Morris, home was both a physical place and emotional ache. Born in Central City, Nebraska, in 1910, Morris made his life elsewhere, but returned to the Platte Valley in his writing and...
