Celebration with Midwest Poets Laureate: An evening with the Power of Words

Come celebrate the power of words with six midwest Poets Laureate!

Thursday, September 26, 2024 from 7-9 PM CT, in-person at Unity Village, MO.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg: Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is the 2009–13 Kansas Poet Laureate, and founder of Transformative Language Arts. Author of twenty-four books, including a memoir on cancer and community, and other prose, she leads community writing workshops for people living with serious illness and teaches widely. Her most recent books are How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems and Miriam's Well, a novel. She also coaches and consults on writing and creativity, and co-leads collaborative workshops and retreats: Writing from the Soul and the Art of Facilitation with Joy Roulier Sawyer,Brave Voice with Kelley Hunt, and Your Right Livelihood (retreat and class) with Kathryn Lorenzen.

Eric McHenry: Eric McHenry is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Odd Evening (Waywiser, 2016). His honors include the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Theodore Roethke Prize from Poetry Northwest, and a term as poet laureate of Kansas. His poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, Field, and The Yale Review. His prose appears in The American Scholar and The New York Times Book Review. He teaches English at Washburn University.

Huascar Medina: Kansas Poet Laureate Emeritus and Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, Huascar Medina is a father and arts administrator. He’s an op-ed writer at Kansas Reflector, an editor for seveneightfive magazine, South Broadway Press, and latinidad.us. Medina also sits on the National Council on the Arts. Website, Instagram, Soundcloud.

Wyatt Townley: Wyatt Townley is Poet Laureate of Kansas Emerita. She has published six books, four of poetry, including Rewriting the Body, The Breathing Field, Perfectly Normal, and The Afterlives of Trees. Her work has been read on NPR and published in journals ranging from New Letters to Newsweek, North American Review to Paris Review, Yoga Journal to Scientific American. Commissioned poems hang on the walls of the Johnson County Library and the Space Telescope Science Institute Library, home of the Hubble. Website, Facebook.

Maryfrances Wagner: Maryfrances Wagner’s latest books are The Immigrants’ New Camera, The Silence of Red Glass, and Solving for X. Her book Red Silk won the Thorpe Menn Book Award. Co-editor of I-70 Review, she also serves as President of The Writers Place. She was Missouri 2020 Individual Artist of the Year and served as the 6th Missouri Poet Laureate 2021-2023. She is the daughter of four Italian immigrant grandparents. Website, LinkedIn.