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[LINCOLN, NE, June 1, 2023] – Local reading is about to be celebrated again in the capital city! After a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the Nebraska Book Festival is back in Lincoln taking place on Saturday, June 10 at the Lincoln Foundation Garden and Lincoln City Library Bennett Martin Branch (1415 N Street). 

Come listen to the local Lincoln music group the String Beans, enjoy prime time family reading time, hear from Carla Ketner about her forthcoming children’s book about Ted Kooser, take part in activities, meet bookish vendors and more!  

The book festival officially kicks off with literary trivia Friday, June 9 at 6:00 p.m. in White Elm Brewing (720 Van Dorn Street). 

Other featured authors include Joy Castro, Dana Fritz, John Mabry, and Matt Mason. For a full schedule of events, please visit bookfestival.nebraska.gov/2023. 

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The book festival is held to celebrate Nebraska’s literary heritage and contemporary authors and to stimulate public interest in books, reading, and the written word. By gathering together contemporary writing talent of our state and surrounding areas, the festival provides an opportunity for participants to cultivate an understanding of our history, culture and community. The festival is sponsored by Nebraska Center for the Book, City of Lincoln Libraries, Nebraska Library Commission, University of Nebraska Press, Francie & Finch Bookshop, and Humanities Nebraska.

Where Nebraska Center for the Book board members share their thoughts about the books they are reading. This month’s review is by Richard Miller.

Review of Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past, edited by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer.

This book, through original and secondary research, attempts to tackle a variety of historical issues in the U.S. that have dogged us for many years — by showing when current views of these issues are not in keeping with fact. The editors, who are both professors at Princeton University, have assembled a lineup of distinguished historians who discuss issues as diverse as American exceptionalism, immigration, American socialism, the New Deal, Confederate monuments, the Great Society, insurrection, the Reagan Revolution, and many others. While some may consider this collection to be left-of-center, the chapter writers provide solid facts to support their conclusions.

Here is one example of the findings on the topic of “voter fraud,” a topic much on the minds of many: “‘Nearly half of Americans believe voter fraud happens at least somewhat often, and 70 percent think it happens at least occasionally . . .'” [ABC News/Washington Post 2016 poll]. But a 2014 study by a Loyola law professor found that, “from 2000 to 2014, out of one billion votes cast in elections in the United States, there were only thirty-one cases of voter-impersonation fraud.”

This title is worth reading. After all, who can resist a book with the opening dedication: “To the archivists, librarians, teachers, and fellow historians who give us a better, and more accurate, understanding of our nation’s past”?

Carson Vaughan has recently written an article all about our 2023 One Book One Nebraska author, Mignon Eberhart! It’s a great read for those interested in learning more after reading “The Mystery of Hunting’s End.” The article was published by Flatwater Free Press on March 24th.

by Deann Gayman | Nebraska Today

Melissa Homestead’s eagerly anticipated book re-centering Edith Lewis in Willa Cather’s personal and professional life will publish April 1, through the Oxford University Press.

“The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis” and Homestead’s achievement will be celebrated with a virtual launch event April 1 at 7 p.m., featuring Homestead in conversation with colleague and novelist Timothy Schaffert.

The event, sponsored by the Cather Project and Department of English, will be held over Zoom. It is free for participants, but registration is required.

The conversation will bring the Cather scholar and Cather enthusiast perspectives together. Schaffert, author of “The Swan Gondola” and professor of English, is a native Nebraskan and Cather fan.

“His work is centered on queer themes and he is writing historical fiction right now,” Homestead said. “I think it will be a conversation for people interested in Tim’s fiction and who are also interested in Willa Cather and learning about her life.”

Through meticulous research that depended heavily on previously unpublished documents kept in archives at Nebraska and elsewhere, Homestead, director of the Cather Project and professor of English, has reconstructed the life Cather and Lewis led together — a life previously erased by Cather scholars and her fans.

“A lot of people found it inconvenient, essentially, for Edith Lewis to exist,” Homestead said. “They wanted to — from their perspective — protect Cather’s reputation.”

In the book, Homestead revisits some of their travels, including trips to the Southwest that inspired “The Professor’s House” and “Death to the Archbishop,” and writes about their professional partnership. Readers may be surprised to learn how much Lewis helped shape Cather’s work.

“They were collaborators in the production of Cather’s fiction,” Homestead said. “Cather did the writing in the first instance, but Edith Lewis edited her fiction and that editing often took the form of adding quite substantial language, while canceling Cather’s language. And then she also, I think, helped Cather to produce herself as an author and as a celebrity.”

Homestead also unpacks Cather’s death in 1947 and the effect it had on Lewis, as well as how the Cold War panic over homosexuality led to Lewis being sidelined by Cather scholars.

In addition to the virtual launch, the book will be previewed in a special event at 7 p.m. March 26, featuring a conversation between Homestead and Alex Ross, a writer with The New Yorker. The virtual event is being hosted by and is a fundraiser for the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud. There is a registration fee.

March 22, 2021 | news.unl.edu