October 4, 2000
Reading Bill Kloefkorn Charter Hall 201 7:30

October 5, 2000
Keynote Address Richard Davies "The Curious View from Main Street" Bellows Academic 102 9:00 a.m.

David Pichaske "What is Midwest about Midwest Writing?" Student Center Mustang Zone 10:00 a.m.

Joe Amato "Writing Regional Histories" Student Center Mustang Zone 10:45 a.m.

Lunch - 11:30

Reading Leo Dangel Bellows Academic 102 12:30 p.m.

Interview Kent Meyers Bellows Academic 102 1:30 p.m.

Panel Discussion: Place and Time in History and Literature Bellows Academic 102 2:30 p.m.

Interview Bill Kloefkorn Bellows Academic 102 3:30 p.m.

Reading Bill Holm Bellows Academic 102 4:30 p.m.

Reading Kent Meyers Bellows Academic 102 7:30 p.m.

October 6, 2000
Davies, Meyers, Kloefkorn available for SMSU classes and consultations.

About the Speakers

William Kloefkorn, recently retired as Professor of English at Nebraska Wesleyan University, is a former Nebraska State Champion hog caller, Nebraska State Poet (by 1982 declaration of the Nebraska Unicameral), and author of many books of poetry including Alvin Turneras Farmer (Windf lower Press, 1972), Platte Valley Homestead (Platte Valley Press, 1981), ludi jr. (Platte Valley Press, 1983), Collecting for the Wichita Beacon (Plane Valley Press, 1984), Where the Visible Sun Is (Spoon River Poetry Press, 1989), Going Out, Coming Back (White Pine Press, 1993), Welcome to Carlos (Spoon River Poetry Press, 2000) and the biography-reminiscence This Death by Drowning (University of Nebraska Press, 1997).

Richard Davies is the University Foundation Professor of History at University of Nevada-Reno, where he has taught for the past three decades. He is the author of Main Street Blues: The Decline of Small Town America (Ohio State University Press, 1998), which traces the impact of regional and national forces on one rural Midwestern town, Camden, Ohio (significantly, the birth place of Sherwood Anderson). Choice review service named Main Street Blues one of twenty-five Outstanding Academic Books in history for 1999. Davies has published on sports, gambling, the impact of the automobile on American society, and reformist politics in the Truman administration.

Kent Meyers grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota, not far from the Minnesota River and attended the University of Minnesota-Morris. His reminiscences of growing up rural were published in 1998 by the University of Minnesota Press as The Witness of Combines, a title taken from the book's first essay, in which Meyers remembers the combines of neighboring farmers lumbering onto the family farm to harvest crops planted by his father, who died of a stroke. The book was a PEN/West finalist and has since been published in paperback. Meyers is also the author of a novel, The River Warren (Hungry Mind Press, 1998; pb Harcourt Brace, 1999) and a collection of short stories, Light in the Crossings (St. Martins, 1999). He presently teaches at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, South Dakota.

Joseph Amato, Professor emeritus of Rural and Regional Studies at Southwest State University, is the author of books on topics as varied as golf and by-pass surgery. These include When Father and Son Conspire (1988), The Great Jerusalem Artichoke Circus (1993), The Decline of Rural Minnesota (1993), and Dust: A History of the Small and Invisible (2000). Joseph and Anthony Amato are the co-authors of "Minnesota, Real and Imagined: A View from the Countryside" published in the summer 2000 issue of Daedalus. Professor Amato's talk was a preliminary version of a chapter of a forthcoming book on writing regional histories, now published entitled Rethinking Home: A Case for Writing Local History.

Philip Dacey, Professor of English at Southwest State University, is a poet of national reputation. Collections include The Boy Under the Bed (1981), Gerard Manley Hopkins Meets Waft Whitman in Heaven and Other Poems (1982), The Man With Red Suspenders (1986), Night Shift at the Crucifix Factory (1991), and The Deathbed Playboy (1999). Dacey is the creator of Marshall Fest, and for many years he directed the creative writing program at Southwest State University. With David Jauss he edited the popular textbook/anthology Strong Measures (1985).

Bill Holm is Professor of English at Southwest State University. His books include Minnesota Lutheran Handbook (nd), The Music of Failure (1985), Boxelder Bug Variations (1985), Coming Home Crazy (1990), The Dead Get By with Everything (1990), The Heart Can Be Filled Up Anywhere on Earth (1996), and Eccentric Islands. Bill's voice -and image- appear frequently on radio and television programs devoted to rural Minnesota and other localities.

Leo Dangel is Professor Emeritus of English at Southwest State University. His books include Old Man Brunner Country (1987), Hogs and Personals (1992), and Home from the Field (1998) currently in second, headed for third printing. Dangel's poems have twice been selected by Garrison Keillor for reading on his NPR Writer's Almanac, and have been adapted for the stage under the title Old Man Brunner Country.

David Pichaske, conference coordinator, is Professor of English at Southwest State University where, among other subjects, he teaches rural/regional literature. He is publisher-editor of Spoon River Poetry Press, Ellis Press and Plains Press, and in the 1990s has spent three years teaching in Lodz, Poland, and Riga, Latvia, on Senior Fulbright scholarships. His books include A Generation in Motion: Popular Music and Culture in the Sixties (1979), Late Harvest: Rural American Writing (1991), Poland in Transition (1994) and, with Joseph Amato, Southwest Minnesota: The Land and the People (2000). His talk was a preliminary version of the keynote address to the fall 2000 conference of the Polish Association of American Studies, delivered in Torun, Poland, in November.