The Writer's Workshop Reading Series at UNO

Maria Zo***la | Wed | Mar 25, 2026

Reading
7:30 P.M.
Milo Bail Student Center Dodge Room

Maria Zo***la is a poet and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. She has writing degrees from Emory University and Falmouth University, and has spent many years leading creative writing workshops for middle and high school youth. Maria’s work has previously appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review, and elsewhere, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize. Her debut poetry collection, Helen of Troy, 1993 (Scribner, 2025), earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick.

Holly Pelesky | Wed | Mar 11

Reading
7:30 P.M.
Criss Library

Holly Pelesky writes essays, fiction and poetry. She received her MFA from the University of Nebraska. Her prose can be found in CutBank, HAD, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, other places. Her collection of letters to her daughter, Cleave, was published by Autofocus Books. She is working on a novel featuring a messy protagonist named Janice. She works as a librarian while raising boys and roommating with her adult daughter in Omaha.

Teresa Carmody | Wed | Feb 25, 2026

Reading
7:30 P.M.
Samual Bak Museum
2289 S 67th St. Omaha

Teresa Carmody (she/they) is a writer of fiction, creative nonfiction, inter-arts collaborations, and hybrid forms. Their recent collection of autofictions, A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others, is out with Autofocus Books (2025). Her other books include The Reconception of Marie (2020), Maison Femme: a fiction (2015), and Requiem (2005; 2025). Their writing has appeared in LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Review, Matters of Feminist Practice, WaterStone Review, Lifework: On the Autobiographical Impulse in Contemporary Art, Writing, and Theory and most recently in Agency 3: Novellas, published by Baobab Press. She currently lives in Omaha and teaches in the Writer’s Workshop and low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at University of Nebraska Omaha.

The Reading Series is supported by the Omaha Public Library. Find books by these writers at OPL under, “Omaha Picks: UNO Reading Series.” Need an OPL library card? You can sign up for an OPL account at our events.

Jonathan Lethem | Wed | Nov 5 | 7:30 P.M. | MBSC Ballroom

Jonathan is a novelist, essayist, and short story writer. The “bard of Brooklyn” (LitHub) is the author of more than a dozen books—including the much-lauded novels The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, which was adapted into a full-length film. He is the winner of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2021, Lethem was named a Library Lion by the New York Public Library, an honor that recognizes individuals who make significant cultural and educational contributions. He holds an honorary doctorate by the Pratt Institute and is the second-ever Roy E. Disney Chair in Creative Writing at Pomona College, succeeding David Foster Wallace. Lethem’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, Esquire, New York Times, The Paris Review, The Believer, Granta, and McSweeney’s. He also served as a guest director at the 45th Telluride Film Festival.

Eileen Myles | Wed | Oct 8

Open Classroom Visit
1:00-2:00 P.M.
CPACS 132/132B

Reading
7:30 P.M.
Milo Bail Student Center Ballroom

Eileen (them/them, b. 1949) is a poet, novelist and art journalist as well as teacher whose practice of vernacular first-person writing across genres has literally changed the game. They are the author of 25 books, including Chelsea Girls and a selected poems, I Must Be Living Twice. Myles has shown their photographs at Bridget Donahue in New York and in Provincetown, MA at Schoolhouse Gallery and in various international public installations. In 2019 Myles wrote and directed a super-8 puppet road film, “The Trip” (Youtube) and their most recent books are Pathetic Literature, and a “Working Life”, poems. They live in New York and Marfa, Texas.

The Fall Reading Series in the School of the Arts kicks off with Hope Wabuke with two inspiring events on Wed. Sept 17.

TLC Talk and Workshop
2:30-3:30p CPACS 132/132B

Reading at 7:30p
Samual Bak Museum
2289 S 67th St. Omaha

Hope is the author of The Body Family, as well as several chapbooks: Movement No.1: Trains, The Leaving, and her.
Her creative and critical work has been published in Guernica, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salamander Literary Journal and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Fulbright Foundation, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women Writers.

JOIN US TONIGHT!

Camille T. Dungy | Mon | Apr 7 | 7:30p | MBSC Nebraska Room

Camille T. Dungy is the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster: May 2023). She has also written Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award. Dungy edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Dungy is the poetry editor for Orion magazine. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems, Best American Essays, The 1619 Project, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, and venues including The New Yorker, Poetry, Literary Hub, The Paris Review, and Poets.org.

Co-sponsored by the UNO English UNO Department of English

Camille Dungy! Tonight!

www.unomaha.edu

Wednesday Night!