Spring 2026 Writer's Workshop Reading Series
We welcome you to the Spring 2026 Reading Series! It's a great lineup of authors and writers to inspire. All events are free and open to the public.
Teresa Carmody | Wed | Feb 25
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.
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.
Maria Zoccola | Wed | Mar 25
Reading
7:30 P.M.
Milo Bail Student Center Dodge Room
Maria Zoccola 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.
Chance Guida | Rachel Williamson | Shirin Jafarizadeh | Wed | Apr 15
Reading
7:30 P.M.
Benson Theatre
Rachel Williamson is an actress and voiceover artist from Omaha, Nebraska, starring in national commercial, film and TV projects. JUICE marks her debut behind the camera as a writer, director and producer. The short film first premiered at the Omaha Film Festival in March 2025 and since then has screened from coast to coast at seven additional film festivals. So far, JUICE has been recognized with nominations for Best Editing, Best Sound and Best Cinematography, with a Director’s Award win at Bizarroland Film Festival in Tampa.
Shirin Jafarizadeh is a photographer and filmmaker from Tehran, Iran. Her work explores themes of psychological turmoil, identity, and alienation, often transforming familiar subjects and spaces into abstracted and unsettling forms. Jafarizadeh works as an interdisciplinary artist in various mediums including photography, video-based art, alternative photographic and printing processes, as well as art installation to further explore ideas of subjective reality and its connection to unique human experiences. Through layering, distortion, and abstraction, she explores the connection between reality and perception, creating visually and emotionally engaging experiences.