Wayne State College's Language and Literature Department, the School of Arts and Humanities, and the WSC Press will host the next installment of the 2025-26 Plains Writers Series, featuring Charles Peek and Shyla Shehan, on Thursday, Nov. 20.
The reading, free and open to the public, will begin at 2 p.m. in the second-floor lounge of the Humanities Building. This event will be livestreamed on the Plains Writers Series Facebook page. For more information visit www.wscpress.com.
Poetry Slam 51 will follow the Plains Writers Series readings. The slam will be held at the Max Bar and Grill in downtown Wayne at 7 p.m., with registration starting at 6:30 p.m. Slam participants need to bring three original poems and the $5 registration fee. All events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.wscpress.com.
Charles Peek’s poems include a Wayne State College Press chapbook, “Where We’ve Managed Somehow to Be (2014),” “Breezes on Their Way to Being Winds (2015 Finishing Line Press and selected for Talking Books and receiving the 2016 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry),” and “Nebraska – Conflicting Reports (Prairie Art Brothers 2020).” One of his poems appeared in Ted Kooser’s “This American Life in Poetry” in 2017. He has been invited to read in Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Wisconsin, Maine, Vermont (Breadloaf), Mississippi, Missouri, China, Spain, Italy, and France.
Peek led the Heartland Emmy Award winning program “Prayers for the People: Carl Sandburg’s Poetry and Songs” and acted on several stages for local theater groups and performance centers. Professor Emeritus at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, Fulbright Scholar (China 2005, 2008), and winner of Nebraska Center for the Book’s Mildred Bennett Award for fostering the literary arts, Peek has been active in delivering presentations for the Willa Cather Foundation, on whose board he served as president.
Peek also has interests in Faulkner, Hemingway, and the Harlem Renaissance. Peek has enjoyed the honor of serving on the last three State Poet selection committees, has frequently been invited to read at the Buffalo Commons Storytelling and Music Festival as well as at the Kearney Storytelling Festival, and continues to teach for Senior College of Central Nebraska. He continues to write and continues his monthly blog, found at CPeek.WordPress.Com.
Shyla Shehan is an analytical Virgo from the Midwest. She earned her master of fine arts degree 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.
Shehan lives in Omaha with her husband Jim, children Cooper and Zoey, and their three cats, Kayla, Doug, and Gus.
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 wscpress@wsc.edu or 402-375-7118, or visit www.wscpress.com.
