Event Archives

The 2023 Spring Conference in Red Cloud will be a celebration of 150 years of Willa Cather’s life and work. As part of that celebration, we will recognize the 100th publication anniversary of one of her greatest novels: A Lost Lady. In conjunction, we will host an invitational exhibit, Visions Seen in the Air, which will feature the work of well-known national and regional artists and be on exhibit in our Red Cloud Opera House gallery from May 16 to July 15, 2023. An artists’ reception will be held during our Spring Conference, June 2, 2023, at 4:30 p.m.

Join us at the Los Angeles Festival of Books on Saturday, April 22, for a Willa Cather Sesquicentennial Celebration!

It will take place on the Poetry Stage, from 5:40-6:00 p.m. at the University of Southern California campus.

A sampling of readings will be presented by National Willa Cather Center board of governors member, and Los Angeles resident, Peter Cipkowski. This is a FREE event that is part of the Los Angeles Times Book Festival.

Help us welcome poet Bruce Whitacre to Red Cloud! Whitacre will be reading poetry from his book The Elk in the Glade: The World of Pioneer and Painter Jennie Hicks. The book celebrates the life of Jennie Hicks, a landscape painter from rural Nebraska who also happens to be Whitacre's great-grandmother. Hicks' paintings will be displayed at the Dawson County Historical Society and Museum in Lexington, Nebraska, from February 10 – August 31, 2023.

Celebrate National Poetry Month with us! Poet Jamaica Baldwin will be on hand for a special poetry reading and discussion in anticipation of Bone Language, her brand new collection of poems. You can register for the event here. Bone Language is also available for pre-order from our bookstore and will be published in June, 2023.

We are proud to bring memoirist Taylor Brorby to our author series for a discussion about his book Boys and Oil: Growing up gay in a fractured land. Brorby will read from his book, an account of his childhood and adolescence in Center, North Dakota interwoven with historic coal-country vignettes. Of Brorby's book New York Times critic Jung Yun writes, "a good memoir allows readers to find moments of common ground with the author.