KEARNEY – Don’t be afraid to check out these upcoming events hosted by the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
‘MOVING CORPSES’
Author Thomas Mira y Lopez will present “Moving Corpses,” a conversation about his research in grief and burying the dead, at 4 p.m. Tuesday (Oct. 15) in the Communications Center Room 101. Mira y Lopez will share images and information from “The Book of Resting Places: A Personal History of Where We Lay the Dead” during the event, which is free and open to the public.
In the aftermath of his father’s untimely death and his family’s indecision over what to do with the remains, Mira y Lopez became obsessed with the type and variety of places where we lay the dead to rest. This collection of essays weaves history, mythology, journalism and personal narrative into his search for a place to process grief.
‘SCARY TALES’
Kearney Symphony Orchestra will present its season-opening concert, “Scary Tales,” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday (Oct. 15) in the Fine Arts Building Recital Hall. The concert features Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” and a world-premiere saxophone concerto by Robert Gross.
Kearney Symphony Orchestra tickets are $10 for adults and free for youths ages 18 and younger, as well as UNK faculty, staff and students with a valid university ID. For information on season tickets, visit the UNK Theatre Box Office, call 308-865-8417 or email boxoffice@unk.edu.
In conjunction with the concert, writer and artist Sarah Minor will install “Baba Yaga House” in the Fine Arts Building, giving attendees an opportunity to walk through the 13-foot “tunnel book.” The installation is based on Minor’s digital chapbook, “The Persistence of the Bonyleg: Annotated,” which revisits the true story of the Lykovs, a family of Old Believers who survived in the Siberian wilderness for 42 years.
Baba Yaga, who lives in a wooden hut that stands on a pair of giant chicken legs, is one of the most famous witches in Slavic folklore and children’s fairy tales.
REYNOLDS SERIES
At 7 p.m. Wednesday (Oct. 16), both Mira y Lopez and Minor will present at the G.W. Frank Museum of History and Culture as part of UNK’s Reynolds Visiting Writers Series, which is free and open to the public.
Mira y Lopez is an editor for Territory, a literary project about maps and other strange objects, and a fiction editor at Diagram. His work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review Online and The Normal School. He was the 2017-18 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a 2015-16 Olive B. O’Connor Fellow at Colgate University. Originally from New York, Mira y Lopez lives and teaches in Cleveland.
Minor is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at the Cleveland Institute of Art, curator of the visual essay series at Essay Daily, video editor at TriQuarterly Review and assistant director of the Cleveland Drafts Literary Festival. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Cincinnati Review, Diagram and Creative Nonfiction Magazine. She has held a research fellowship to Iceland from the American Scandinavian Foundation and fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center and Hambidge Center for Creative Arts, and was the 2018 Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Writer’s Workshop.
