Nothing But Land: Willa Cather and Indigenous Writers
Urban League of Nebraska
Large Conference Room
3040 Lake Street
Omaha, NE 68135
United States
In partnership with the Nebraska Writers Collective, we are delighted to invite writers of all backgrounds to join poet Karla Hernandez Torrijos for refreshments and a free workshop focused on place-based writing. Karla will lead participants in writing exercises that incorporate selections from My Ántonia as well as work by Thomas C. Gannon and Zitkala-Sa. Through these excerpts, contemporary writers will contemplate indigenous perspectives of place juxtaposed with late 19th century settlement culture.
Willa Cather’s My Ántonia was among the fifty titles selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for their 2024 Big Read initiative. In partnership with Arts Midwest, the NEA Big Read supports community reading programs designed around a single NEA Big Read book, with an aim to broaden our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book.
The Big Read Initiative
With the support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Arts Midwest, we are making programs and resources available to organizations and communities that wish to take part in a shared reading experience with a focus on My Ántonia and its reputation as a most “American novel.” Initiatives will take place between September 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025, and will include:
- Complimentary books for participating organizations and communities
- Book club resources
- Lectures and book discussions led by National Willa Cather Center leadership
- Place-based and online creative writing workshops
- Traveling exhibits related to the novel (please see descriptions below)
- A keynote address by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley at the 70th annual Willa Cather Spring Conference
- My Ántonia-themed guided tours
- A special event at the recently restored Pavelka Farmstead, a setting from the final scenes of the novel
NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. El Proyecto NEA Big Read es una iniciativa del National Endowment for the Arts (el Fondo Nacional para las Artes de Estados Unidos) en cooperacion con Arts Midwest.
Special thanks to the Nebraska Writers Collective and the Urban League of Nebraska for their support.
Karla Hernandez Torrijos
Karla Hernandez Torrijos (she/her) is a poet and workshop facilitator. Beginning at an open mic in 2017, Karla has been invited to read her work in venues across Nebraska, including The Bay, El Museo Latino, and The UNL Wick Alumni Center. The recipient of the 2024 Kate Sommer Memorial Poetry Prize, the 2024 Gaffney Prize for Poetry, the 2023 Irby F. Wood Prize for Poetry, and the 2021 Vreeland Award for Poetry, her writing interrogates our understanding of home, displacement, and the liminal space in between. Karla was the 2021-2022 Creative in Community Resident for the LUX Center for the Arts and the inaugural Student Storyteller in Residence for The Center for Great Plains Studies. Her chapbook saturn devouring his daughter is forthcoming from Game Over Books.