Local Author Celebration Series!
Get to know local authors in an intimate environment as they share their inspirations and writing processes with us!
Our Local Author Celebration series is presented as an offering of the Castle & Cathedral District, with the support of the Nebraska Arts Council.
November 20: Francis Rourke
Please be our guest for a local author talk featuring Francis Rourke, author of "Paradise Point"
Where: Carriage House at Joslyn Castle & Gardens (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, NE 68131)
When: Wednesday, November 20 from 6pm-7pm (doors open at 5:30pm)
What: A FREE all ages event.
About the Author:
Francis Rourke, born in Fountain Valley, California, is a writer whose work explores the boundaries of literature through the lens of OULIPO—a style marked by the use of creative constraints in form and rhetorical devices.
Rourke's writing spans multiple genres, with a focus on experimenting with structure and storytelling techniques. He is the author of three collections of poetry, the short story collection AH UM: Exercises In Plot & Perspective, the novella Berringer: A Hardboiled Quixote, and an autobiographical series titled The Books of Rourke (Good Morning Wednesday and OM . . . AHA!).
In his autobiographical works, Rourke delves further into his experimental style, aiming to uncover magic in the mundane—a concept he calls "realistic magicalism." Now residing in Omaha, Nebraska, Rourke continues to push the boundaries of literary form, inviting readers to engage with the possibilities of literature in new and thought-provoking ways.
About the book:
Paradise Point tells the whimsical and thought-provoking tale of the Painter, who is mysteriously transported from Renaissance Italy to the modern world of the 21st century. Tasked with painting the portrait of the enigmatic Bookmaker, the Painter is shocked to find a society consumed by digital devices, leading its people to disconnect from nature, creativity, and their own senses. With the help of the Poet and the Bookmaker, the Painter embarks on a mission to rekindle wonder, imagination, and human connection.
Set in the vibrant, quirky community of Paradise Point on the California coast, the novel unfolds through a series of interconnected stories and memorable characters, reminiscent of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Along the way, readers meet colorful figures like Myra Dukes, Saul Crinkle, Krishna Singh, and Balso Thomas Francis Snell, whose personal dilemmas add layers of humor, mystery, and heart to the narrative.
As these characters’ lives intersect, the story explores the fine line between progress and disconnection, creativity and destruction—leading to unexpected chaos and a journey that unravels with each rhythmic, poetic turn of the page.
December 4: Dale Gilbert
Please be our guest for a local author talk featuring Dale Gilbert, author of "The Gentle Giant of Nebraska."
Where: Carriage House at Joslyn Castle & Gardens (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, NE 68131)
When: Wednesday, December 4 from 6pm-7pm (doors open at 5:30pm)
What: A FREE all ages event.
About the author:
Dale Gilbert was born and raised in Hamburg, Iowa. His first book, Thunder on Bays Mountain, is a compelling story of the pre-and post-Civil War era as seen through the eyes of his great-great-grandfather, Green Berry Gilbert, a Tennessee farmer-turned soldier-turned preacher.
As a writer of historical fiction, Dale weaves historically accurate details about the land, events, and its people with absorbing stories about the experiences of his family. He sheds light on their personal and professional activities, focuses on any ethical and moral issues, while describing what it was like to exist during a specific time frame.
Dale holds degrees of BS and MBA as well as a Graduate Degree in Banking. He is a retired chief financial officer whose forty-two-year career in the business world spanned retailing, telecommunications, and banking.
About the book:
The Gentle Giant of Nebraska is a story about the author’s family in the early history of Johnson County, Nebraska, 1860-1885. The book is narrated through the eyes and experiences of the author’s great-great-grandfather, Ishmael Hickey—known by many newspaper accounts of the time as being “the largest man in the West.”
The reader will follow Ishmael as he recounts his early life in Illinois, including a life-changing event at age seven, the courtship of his future wife, Elizabeth, the family’s involvement in circus life, their trek to Nebraska Territory, and their resilience in the face of the devastating floods of 1883.
Past Presentations
October 23: Joshua Howell
Please be our guest for a local author talk featuring Joshua D. Howell, author of "The Fierce Saga".
Where: Carriage House at Joslyn Castle & Gardens (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, NE 68131)
When: Wednesday, October 23 from 6pm-7pm (doors open at 5:30pm)
What: A FREE all ages event.
About the Author:
Joshua D. Howell. wrote his first novel in high school and published it while serving overseas in the military. Since returning to civilian life, he has received awards for several works of poetry, as well as a few short stories published in various fiction anthologies. Recently, Joshua has completed his science fiction novel trilogy, The Fierce Saga, which also featured a graphic novel adaptation of the first book. He also published a 15-year anniversary revised edition of his first book. When not on the road exhibiting at comic-cons around the nation, Joshua works for a nonprofit organization in Gretna, Nebraska.
See (and buy) his collection of books at: https://www.fierceliterature.com
Joshua will be presenting his oeuvre of published works as well as discussing his writing process and interacting with the audience.
September 25 - Holly Pelesky
Please be our guest for our next local author talk featuring Holly Pelesky, author of "Quiver" and "Cleave."
Holly will read select pieces of her poetry, essays, and fiction at the event. A Q&A will be facilitated by Jon Graf.
Where: Carriage House at Joslyn Castle & Gardens (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, NE 68131)
When: Wednesday, September 25 from 6pm-7pm (doors open at 5:30pm)
What: A FREE all ages event.
About the Author:
Holly Pelesky is a writer and lover of literature. She reads and writes in all genres, preferring that which makes her laugh and feel and think. She was once a homeschooled kid living in the suburbs of Seattle but has spent her adulthood in the Midwest, outgrowing her Fundamental upbringing. She is a graduate of the MFA Program at the University of Nebraska Omaha. There she met her friends turned writing group turned co-founders of Vast Literary Press. She has written two books so far: 1) Quiver, a poetry chapbook and (2) Cleave, a collection of letters to her daughter she placed up for adoption. She is currently working on a collection of short stories revolving around a messy protagonist named Janice. She works in a library by weekday, weekends in a college writing center. She will graduate with her Master of Library and Information Science degree in December 2024. She lives in Omaha with her two sons and their indoor/outdoor cat. Sometimes, her daughter visits.
October 4: Abraham Smith and Steve Timm
Please be our guest for a special double engagement featuring two authors: Abraham Smith and Steve Timm
Where: Carriage House at Joslyn Castle & Gardens (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, NE 68131)
When: Friday, October 4 from 6pm-7pm (doors open at 5:30pm)
What: A FREE all ages event.
About our Authors:
Abraham Smith was raised around Ladysmith, Wisconsin, and lives in Ogden, Utah, where he is associate professor of English and co-director of Creative Writing at Weber State University. His recent poetry collections include Insomniac Sentinel (Baobab Press, 2023) and Dear Weirdo (Propeller Books, 2022). Away from his desk, Smith improvises poems inside songs with the Snarlin' Yarns: thesnarlinyarnsut.bandcamp.com.
Abraham Smith’s Insomniac Sentinel is a concatenation of sandhill cranes and their haunting deep time dinosaur barking. It is the croon of safety from the heart of Wisconsin. It is an aegis from the violence perpetuated on the young; that the young perpetuate; lurching and launching from tercets, those familiar island letting go sideways, the poems themselves as steady and desultory as sand and people and the places they abide. Insomniac Sentinel is a collision of meter, speed, and experience into auditory sensations that range from the elegiac to the ecstatic to the venomous in Smith’s nuanced considerations of blue-collar America. Mirroring the attentions of Midwest arrhythmia in the music of the sandhill cranes, Insomniac Sentinel resonates on temporal frequencies, waves ancient and contemporary, rolling from the throats of giants.
___
Steve Timm is the author most recently of Ornithocracy (Stone Corpse Press, 2024) and Rule of Composition: 100 Poems Written to the Cecil Taylor Feel Trio’s 2 Ts for a Lovely T (Bananaquit Press, 2022). About an earlier book, Joan Retallack blurbed “Steve Timm’s word spectrum is brave, unnerving, dazzling, commodious... [and] unyieldingly good naturedly plays with an impressive number of entrenched expectations.” He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, Shari Bernstein, and son, Alex (who finds his poems “interesting”).
Many new and old poems can be found across the internet and in print journals (e.g., American Poetry Review). His live performances are known for ending with an improvised sound poem.
September 18 - Kevin Clouther
Please be our guest for a local author talk featuring Kevin Clouther, author of "Maximum Speed" and "We Were Flying to Chicago."
Where: Carriage House at Joslyn Castle & Gardens (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, NE 68131)
When: Wednesday, September 18 from 6pm-7pm (doors open at 5:30pm)
What: A FREE all ages event.
About the Author:
Kevin Clouther is the author of the story collections "Maximum Speed" and "We Were Flying to Chicago." His stories have appeared in Confrontation, Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, Joyland, and Ruminate, among other journals. He holds degrees from the University of Virginia and Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the recipient of the Richard Yates Fiction Award and Gell Residency Award. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha Writer’s Workshop, where he directs the MFA in Writing He lives with his wife and two children in Omaha.
About his book "Maximum Speed":
Like Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Kevin Clouther’s Maximum Speed moves across time and point of view to dramatize youth’s aftershocks. The unifying presence in three characters’ lives is Billy, an apprentice drug dealer in South Florida. His improbable appearance twenty years after his death reconnects Nick, Andrea, and Jim with each other and with the shared secret of their past.
August 7 - Giusy Sciacca
Author Talk featuring Giusy Sciacca, author of "Truth: Stories of Sicilian Women"
Where: Carriage House on the Joslyn Castle & Garden Grounds (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, Nebraska 68131).
When: Wednesday, August 7 from 6:00pm to 7:00pm (Doors open at 5:30pmpm).
What: This event is free and open to the public – an all-ages event.
Join us for an author talk surrounding the new book, "Truth: Stories of Sicilian Women," the English translation of the original “Virità, femminile singolare-plurale” (Edizioni Kalòs, 2021), written by Sicilian writer Giusy Sciacca.
From Sicily, the very heart of the Mediterranean Sea, where many immigrants to the U.S. came from, the author aims to spread the maternal voice of the Island as far as she can through a choir of twenty women. Not by chance, Truth: Stories of Sicilian Women is dedicated “to the Sicilians of Omaha (NE) and to all the daughters and sons of Sicily in the world.” Goddesses, saints, queens, scientists, artists, revolutionaries, and more. All are Sicilian, but they were influential beyond regional boundaries because “Sicily is an island and an entire world.”
Each of the timeless women who speaks in this book has something to reveal about herself, something the history books never recorded. Shaped by female contemporary vision, these assembled narratives become a choir of voices that reach beyond any stereotypes or patriarchal filters. A bibliography details the extensive research the author conducted in archives and in forgotten areas of Sicily.
Giusy Sciacca will be present at the Historical boot during the Santa Lucia Festival.
About Giusy Sciacca:
Sicilian author and playwright Giusy Sciacca lives between Rome and Syracuse. After Virità, femminile singolare-plurale (Kalòs, 2021), her novel D’amore e di rabbia was published by the prestigious Italian publisher Neri Pozza in 2023. In addition to writing, she is also an air-traffic controller holding a managerial position for the implementation of technology in airports.
July 17 - Theodore Wheeler and Chris Harding Thornton
Local Author Celebration Series featuring Theodore Wheeler, author of "The War Begins in Paris" and Chris Harding Thorton, author of "Little Underworld."
When: Wed, July 17th from 5:30 to 7:00 (Doors open at 5pm).
About Theodore Wheeler:
Theodore Wheeler is a writer, bookseller, and college professor from Omaha. He is author of the novels In Our Other Lives and Kings of Broken Things, and the collection of short fiction Bad Faith. His fourth book, The War Begins in Paris, is will be published by Little, Brown & Co. on November 14, 2023.
He has been honored with a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship, a Nebraska Book Award, the Marianne Russo Award from Key West Literary Seminar, and a fellowship from Akademie Schloss Solitude. Theodore teaches creative writing at Creighton University.
About his book "The War Begins in Paris"
Paris, 1938. Two women meet: Mielle, a shy pacifist and shunned Mennonite who struggles to fit in with the elite cohort of foreign correspondents stationed around the city; the other, Jane, a brash, legendary American journalist, who is soon to become a fascist propagandist. When World War II makes landfall in the City of Lights, Mielle falls under Jane’s spell, growing ever more intoxicated by her glamour, self-possession, and reckless confidence. But as this recklessness devolves into militarism and an utter lack of humanity, Mielle is seized by a series of visions that show her an inescapable truth: Jane Anderson must die, and Mielle must be the one to kill her.
Structured as a series of dispatches filed from around Europe and based on the misadventures of a real journalist-turned-Nazi mouthpiece, The War Begins in Paris is a cat-and-mouse suspense that examines the relentlessness of propaganda, the allure of power, and how far one woman will go for the sake of her morality.
About Chris Harding Thornton:
Chris Harding Thornton, a seventh-generation Nebraskan, is the author of Pickard County Atlas. She has worked as a quality assurance overseer at a condom factory, a jar-lid screwer at a plastics plant, a closer at Burger King, a record store clerk, an all-ages club manager, a PR writer, and a teacher of writing and literature. She holds an MFA from the University of Washington and a PhD from the University of Nebraska. She lives in Wahoo, Nebraska.
About Her Book, Little Underworld:
Omaha, 1930. When ex-cop-turned-PI Jim Beely murders the man who assaulted his fourteen-year-old daughter, the last person he wants to see is local crooked cop Frank Tvrdik. Luckily, Frank isn't interested in the lifeless body in Jim's car. Frank has a proposition: he'll make the dead man disappear if Jim helps take down Elmer Kobb, who is vying for city commissioner and willing to backstab anyone who gets in his way.
Soon, Jim and Frank are sucked into a seedy world of crime and corruption, where no one is safe, and nothing is what it seems. Then Jim is violently attacked and one of his operatives turns up dead within the span of twelve hours, and his search for the truth yields a web of lies and a mounting death toll. As he and Frank are pulled deeper into the city's dark underbelly and its absurd political machinations, Jim begins to question everything he knows about Omaha and his place in it.In her moody, ferocious, and darkly funny follow-up to PIckard County Atlas, a novel Tana French called a "slow-burning beauty of a book," the native Nebraskan Chris Harding Thornton mines Omaha's sordid past, melding fact and fiction into an unforgettable tale of danger and deceit. Little Underworld asks: What does it mean to be good, and what is left for those of us who aren't?
June 19 - Caitlin Cass, Author of "Suffrage Song"
Where: Carriage House on the Joslyn Castle & Garden Grounds (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, Nebraska 68131).
When: Wed, June 19th from 5:30 to 7:00 (Doors open at 5pm).
What: This event is free and open to the public – an all-ages event.
New Yorker contributing cartoonist Caitlin Cass traces the fight for suffrage in the U.S. from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This intersectional history of women and voting rights chronicles the suffrage movement's triumphs, setbacks, and problematic aspects.
"She put in her work, but there's so much left to do." Begun in the Antebellum era, the song of suffrage was a rallying cry across the nation that would persist over a century. Capturing the spirit of this refrain, New Yorker contributing cartoonist Caitlin Cass pens a sweeping history of women's suffrage in the U.S. — a kaleidoscopic story akin to a triumphant and mournful protest song that spans decades and echoes into the present.
In Suffrage Song, Cass takes a critical, intersectional approach to the movement's history — celebrating the pivotal, hard-fought battles for voting rights while also laying bare the racist compromises suffrage leaders made along the way. She explores the multigenerational arc of the movement, humanizing key historical figures from the early days of the suffrage fight (Susan B. Anthony, Frances Watkins Harper), to the dawn of the "New Women" (Alice Paul, Mary Church Terrell), to the Civil Rights era (Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker). Additionally, this book sheds light on less chronicled figures such as Zitkala-Ša and Mabel Ping Hua-Lee, whose stories reveal the complex racial dynamics that haunt this history.
About Caitlin Cass:
Caitlin Cass is an American artist whose comics often reckon with America's thorny history. Cass's work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Lily, and The Nib. She was a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Fiction, and her 2020 solo exhibition "Women's Work" was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Illustration, and Time-Based Media at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
May 22 - Jon Volkmer, Author of "Brave in Season"
Where: Carriage House on the Joslyn Castle & Garden Grounds (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, Nebraska 68131).
When: Wed, May 22 from 5:30 to 7:00 (Doors open at 5pm).
What: This event is free and open to the public – an all-ages event.
Set in 1950 in the rural Midwest, and inspired by real events, this gripping novel explores what happens when an African American railroad repair crew is dropped into a tiny, tight-knit farm community. Will frictions build to an all-too familiar American tragedy, or can tensions be overcome in that uniquely American way, with balls and bats and a field of green?
Seventeen-year-old Carlin Littman has big dreams, much bigger than will fit into sleepy Julian, Nebraska, population 172. She has set her sights on college, Chicago, and beyond. The arrival of the rail workers, known as gandy dancers, is an interesting distraction in the bored summer days where her only job is looking after her little brother, Timmy. When she befriends Sam Washington, the awkward, bookish gandy a year younger than she, neither of them have any idea what they have set in motion.
Many decades later, Tim returns to Nebraska, attempting to recover the lost history through interviews with the few surviving seniors who might remember. These encounters provide the basis for a story that lies somewhere between myth and memory. A story where the mutual respect between the oldest gandy, Jerome, and the store owner, Dave, offers townsfolk an alternative to stereotype and prejudice. A story where the new rail line is being built over the route of the underground railroad, challenging a new generation of farm families to live up to that heritage. A story where an unlikely pick-up game propels players on both sides to epic performances.
Race, railroads, and baseball are iconic themes that come together in this moving story of the American heartland.
Jon’s Bio:
Jon Volkmer is a Nebraska City native with a master’s in creative writing from Denver University, and a PhD in English from UNL. His books include a travel memoir, Eating Europe, a poetry collection, The Art of Country Grain Elevators, and a YA biography of Roberto Clemente. His stories, poems and essays have appeared widely in such venues as Commonweal, Cimarron Review, Southern Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, and Platte Valley Review. He is professor of English and director of creative writing at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
May 15 - Ami Polite, Author of "Garden Your Hair"
Where: Carriage House on the Joslyn Castle & Garden Grounds (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, Nebraska 68131)
When: WED, MAY 15 from 5:30 to 7:00 (Doors open at 5pm)
What: All ages event, FREE
Description:
How do you combine the love and art of gardening, haircare and music? You make a growing mixtape. Garden My Hair is a memoir/manual/mixtape cultivated by gardener Ami Polite. From a small sprout in the middle of the South Bronx of New York to maturing in the wide-open Great Plains of Nebraska in the late 90s and early 2000s, Ami took her frustrations of midwest living and natural haircare and directed it toward gardening. Twenty years later of pulling braids and weeds, she has enough energy in her fingers to pen her personal thoughts and observations, that not only are relatable, humorous, passionate but doable. This mix will have you watering your hair, giving your garden a Hi-Five and doing the one-two step all at the same time.
About Ami Polite:
Ami gardens in the Great Plains of the United States. She gardens for the best and the brightest in Omaha loving plants belonging to those who have busy lives. She freely volunteers, travels solo, joyfully dabbles in foreign languages, and finds the best global music. If you have a beautiful garden that escapes to the sidewalk, Ami will stalk it and love it.
Trugs and her faithful Hori Hori knife are her favorite workmates. She lives with Giselle the Ponytail Palm, Thor the Christmas Cactus, Sasha the Sansevieria and Vera her thick Aloe.
April 24 - Charles Kelly, Author of "Grace Humiston and the Vanishing"
Local Author Celebration Series featuring Charles Kelly, author of "Grace Humiston and the Vanishing"
Where: Carriage House on the Joslyn Castle & Garden Grounds (3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, Nebraska 68131).
When: Wed, APRIL 24 from 5:30 to 7:00 (Doors open at 5pm).
What: This event is free and open to the public – an all-ages event.
Description:
It’s 1917 in New York City, and lawyer Grace Humiston has made her reputation as a sleuth by saving a falsely-convicted man from death row. Now she is hired to probe the disappearance of high school student Ruth Cruger. The search will take her and Transylvanian private investigator Julius Kron through the sewers of New York police corruption, into the darkness of the international prostitution trade, and onto the high seas. Grace Humiston and the Vanishing is a novel based on the greatest triumph of America’s most remarkable forgotten woman detective.
Charles’s Bio:
Charles Kelly, formerly a reporter for The Arizona Republic, was co-winner of the Arizona Journalist of the Year Award in 1992. In his career as a reporter, he found missing heirs, helped get a wrongly convicted tugboat captain out of a Mexican prison, and investigated the 1976 murder of Republic reporter Don Bolles. Kelly is the author of the novels Pay Here, published by Point Blank Press, and Grace Humiston and the Vanishing, a semifinalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. He also wrote the short story “The Eighth Deadly Sin,” published in the collection Phoenix Noir issued by Akashic Books.
John Dechant, Author of "Little Poison"
Castle & Cathedral District presents:
Local Author Celebration Series
March Author: John Dechant
Cost: Free
When: Wed, March 20 Doors open at 5pm // event begins at 5:30
Age: All ages welcome!
Where: Joslyn Castle Carriage House, 3902 Davenport Street, Omaha, NE 68131
Get to know local authors in an intimate environment as they share their inspirations and writing processes with us! In March, we're thrilled to welcome John Dechant, partner at Legacy Preservation and longtime Joslyn Castle supporter.
About John:
John Dechant is the author of Little Poison: Paul Runyan, Sam Snead, and a Long-Shot Upset at the 1938 PGA Championship. He has played golf since childhood but only recently began writing about it.
Today, Dechant lives in Omaha with his wife and children. He is the president of Legacy Preservation, a specialty publishing firm that helps families and businesses across the country preserve their history in book form. He is a graduate of Creighton University, where he received a journalism degree in 2005 and a master’s degree in 2008. While at Creighton he was a member of the men’s golf team. In 2005 he received the team’s “Most Inspirational Player” award.
About Kim:
Kim Isherwood is an Intuitive Medium, Registered Nurse, Reki Master, Hypnotherapist, yoga, and meditation teacher. She has spent her entire career as a healer, teacher, and leader. She has worked with hundreds of clients from around the world for over a decade. She also offers popular workshops and retreats. She lives in a historic home in Omaha with her husband and two dogs.
About her book:
Looking for closure after a difficult experience? Think again.
In Closure: The Lie We Tell Ourselves, intuitive medium Kim Isherwood shatters the myth of closure and offers a radical new approach to healing and acceptance.
Drawing from her years of experience connecting with the spiritual realm, Isherwood shows how the pursuit of closure can become a trap that keeps us stuck in the past, unable to move forward. With real-life examples and a down-to-earth style, she offers a fresh perspective on the complexities of grief and the power of intuition.
Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, Closure: The Lie We Tell Ourselves is sure to challenge your assumptions and leave you with a new appreciation for the mysteries of the human experience. Get ready to open your mind, embrace the messiness of life, and turn the societal rules for grief upside down.
