Longstanding event celebrating creative writing set for Saturday
LIBERAL, Kan. – Kansas Poet Laureate Traci Brimhall will join the Seward County Community College Creative Writer’s Coffeehouse at 7 p.m. Saturday, in the Hobble Academic Building’s “One Stop Shop.” The popular event hosted by the SCCC English Department typically occurs in April, which is designated as National Poetry Month.
However, enlisting Brimhall as the featured reader was an opportunity too good to pass up, said SCCC Humanities Division Chair, Dr. Magda Silva.
“We love our creative writers coffeehouse, started more than a decade ago in honor of National Poetry Month, and we love good poetry,” Silva said. “Since our state Poet Laureate was planning a tour of the Southwest corner of the state, we opted to move the date back — and we are excited.”
Brimhall, who has served as Kansas Poet Laureate since 2023, is finishing a four-year term. She is a professor of creative writing at Kansas State University, the author of five collections of poetry, including Love Prodigal(Copper Canyon, 2024).
“What’s broken cannot be / healed with anything but superglue / and imagination. Still, let it be tended to. / Let it be tender.”
Excerpt from the title poem in the collection Love Prodigal
Her poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Nation, Orion, The New Republic, Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic. She’s received fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, the National Park Service, the Academy of American Poets, and Purdue Library’s Special Collections to study the lost poem drafts of Amelia Earhart. She’s also the current poet-in-residence at the Guggenheim museum.
The public is invited to attend the Creative Writers Coffeehouse at 7 p.m. Saturday. The free evening features coffee, light refreshments, a reading by Brimhall, and readings by SCCC students, faculty, and staff.