Welcome to Poetry at the Lion! All poets and poetry fans are welcome!

Each month, a featured poet will read from their works and shape the evening’s experience. Poetry lovers can stop on their way to eat out or bring a brown bag meal and stay for the whole evening. Light refreshments will be provided.

The originally featured poet for August, Robert Fernandez, had to cancel. We are delighted that Kelly Madigain and friends -- Brad Anderson, Amy Plettner, and Karen Shoemaker -- will share their poetry with us instead.

Kelly Madigan is a poet, an essayist, and a licensed drug and alcohol counselor. She is the author of a book of nonfiction prose, *Getting Sober: A Practical Guide to Making It Through the First 30 Days *(2007), and a collection of poetry, The Edge of Known Things (2013).

Brad Anderson began writing poetry after his wife was diagnosed with dementia in 2010, as a "survival tactic."

Amy Plettner is an outdoor educator on Nebraska's endangered tallgrass prairie. Her poetry has been published in a variety of anthologies and journals, most recently The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, burntdistrict, Rattle, Prairie Wind and The Untidy Season.

Karen Shoemaker is the author of the novel The Meaning of Names, a One Book One Nebraska selection for 2016 and Omaha Reads selection for 2014. Her award-winning collection of short stories, Night Sounds and Other Stories was published in 2002, and re-published in the United Kingdom in 2006. She has taught creative writing and literature classes for more than 25 years. She is the founder and director of Larksong Writers Place.