The Linden Review, in partnership with the University of Nebraska at Omaha English Department and Creative Nonfiction Program, the Moonrise Gallery, and Glacier Creek Preserve, is proud to announce the details of this year’s Bouteloua LitArt Fest, a celebration of local authors and artists.

The event will be held at Glacier Creek Preserve in Bennington from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 1, 2023. The event is free to attend and open to the public, and complimentary food and drink will be provided.

Melissa Febos will be the keynote speaker for the event. Febos is the acclaimed author of four nonfiction books, including the memoir, Girlhood (currently translated into seven languages), and the craft book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative—both were national best sellers.  Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and many other venues.  Her awards include a Guggenheim, NEA Fellowship, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.  She is a professor in the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program. 

The event will kick off at 2:00 p.m. with a panel of local authors: Gene Kwak, Jody Keisner, Lisa Knopp, and Rachel Luck. Melissa Febos’s talk will be from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m.

Gene Kwak has published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lit Hub, Wigleaf, and Electric Literature among others. Go Home, Ricky! is his debut novel and was a Rumpus October Book Club Selection, was featured in Vanity Fair magazine and Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, and has garnered rave reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Booklist among others. He is also the winner of the 2022 Poets & Writers Maureen Egen WEX Prize. He currently lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University.

Jody Keisner is an Associate Professor at UNO, where she teaches creative nonfiction. Her first book, Under My Bed and Other Essays is available now. Her essays have appeared in Fourth Genre, Cimarron Review, Brevity, VIDA Review, Assay, The Rumpus, The Normal School, Hippocampus, and many others. Her essay “Runaway Mother” was a notable Best American Essay 2022. She writes for AARP’s The Girlfriend, and is the Editor-in-Chief of The Linden Review, a journal of creative nonfiction focused on health.

Lisa Knopp is the author of seven books of creative nonfiction. Her most recent book, From Your Friend, Carey Dean: Letters from Nebraska’s Death Row (Cascade Books 2022), tells the story of the remarkable, platonic, 23-year friendship between her and Carey Dean Moore, a double murderer who the state of Nebraska executed in 2018. Currently, Lisa is working on a collection of autobiographical essays, Ravellings: Essays on Love, Loss, and Wonder. Essays in that collection have been published in such journals as Brevity, Gettysburg Review, Georgia Review, Blood Orange Review, Ascent, Hospital Drive, and Seneca Review. Seven of Lisa's essays have received notable essay citations in the Best American Essays series. She is the recipient of two Nebraska Arts Council fellowships.

Rachel Luck (she/they) is a nonfiction writer, poet, and graduate student from Omaha, Nebraska. She is also a teaching artist in the Nebraska Writers Collective, bringing the art of slam poetry into high school classrooms.

The event will also feature prairie walks and an exhibition of art from local artists, curated and sponsored by Moonrise Gallery. Visitors can take in the rolling hills and the countryside scenery at the 525-acre preserve, part of University of Nebraska at Omaha's extended campus. The location features several trails, some of which wind through the 140-acre Allwine Prairie Tract, a restored tallgrass prairie created in 1970.