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All aboard! Participants brought a burning passion, fascinating hobby, or unique knowledge they wanted to share. Whether they were lifelong train enthusiasts or wanted to write about an entirely different track that sparked their interest, this inclusive, four-part workshop series was designed for them.
Created for individuals affected by disabilities, Preferred Interest Talks was all about finding your voice, fueling creativity, and getting stories moving in the right direction. No prior writing or public speaking experience was required—the workshops helped participants move their ideas from the platform to their destination.
Workshops 1 & 2: Laying the Tracks: The Writing Sessions
Participants brainstormed, wrote, and polished a short creative or informational piece. Whether writing about locomotive history or sharing a different personal passion, the sessions helped keep the writing rolling and participants loco-motivated!
Workshop 3: Full Steam Ahead: The Performance Session
Participants learned how to share their words with confidence, practicing reading aloud, pacing, and basic performance techniques in a supportive, low-pressure environment before taking the stage.
The Final Destination: Showcase at The Durham Museum!
Participants celebrated their hard work and shared their finished pieces with an audience of family, friends, and community members inside the historic Durham Museum.
Workshops:
Showcase:
Bridgit Kuenning is a writer, mom, sometimes performer who lives at the intersection of creativity and woowoo. Her work has appeared in the Omaha World Herald, the Insider, Hippocampus Magazine, the Random Sample Review and elsewhere. Her play "Disability is not a Dirty Word" was produced by Anastasis Theatre Co in 2023. You can find her on Instagram and YouTube, talking about life, writing, and tarot.
Angélica Perez is a Core Teaching Artist with the Nebraska Writers Collective, where she supports Teaching Artists and young poets, helps to run monthly open mics and slams in Omaha, and leads poetry workshops with incarcerated people throughout Nebraska. Perez is also a faculty member of The Naturalist School. Her work there is rooted in creative ecology; she leads workshops on nature writing, native seed collecting, and tree planting. You'll often find her in a tree or on her longboard, trying to add to her collection of bumps, bruises, and bug bites.
Nebraska Writers Collective
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