UNL's Prairie Schooner to launch 12-city tour across Nebraska

            Editors of the Prairie Schooner -- the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's international literary journal -- will embark on a 12-city driving tour across Nebraska in December. Kwame Dawes, editor-in-chief, and Marianne Kunkel, managing editor -- both accomplished poets -- say they planned the trip to connect with writers around the state.

            "Prairie Schooner is one of Nebraska's greatest and most enduring gifts to the world, and it has been giving America so much for 86 years," Dawes said. "I want to find as many ways to remind the people of the state about what a treasure we have and to see if we can generate even more ownership and pride in the publication."

            The first-of-its-kind tour, which runs Dec. 8-20, will make stops in Alliance, Battle Creek, Beatrice, Broken Bow, Central City, Fremont, Neligh, Norfolk, Omaha, Potter, South Sioux City and Stromsburg. Each visit will feature poetry readings by Dawes and Kunkel followed by a question-and-answer session. Information about submissions and subscriptions also will be available.

            "This is a great opportunity for people across Nebraska to hear an internationally known Nebraska poet read from his work and to learn more about Nebraska’s own Prairie Schooner," said Rod Wagner, director of the Nebraska Library Commission, referencing Dawes specifically.

            This tour fulfills one of the goals Dawes set after taking the helm of the Prairie Schooner in 2011.

            Since Dawes' arrival, Prairie Schooner has expanded its Web presence and has made the move to online submissions. Prairie Schooner has begun to have a marked international focus. Dawes, however, sees this tour as a way to remind its core audience about the journal's roots in Nebraska and its continued interest in regional writers as well as its reliance on the support and interest of Nebraskans.

            "We do not want to be an impersonal journal, but one that is aware that real people read and support the journal, and many of those real people live here in Nebraska," he said. "The great perk for all of this, however, is that I get a chance to see the state more and to find out how Prairie Schooner can support the literary arts in Nebraska in town after town."

            For more details about the tour, including a complete calendar of tour dates and times, visit http://prairieschooner.unl.edu.

Writer: Marianne Kunkel