Matthew Schmeer and Steve Werkmeister Riverfront Reading Friday, Nov. 12th, 8:00

To attend, please register for the reading at https://squoom.com/z/rfz211112, and you will be provided with the information needed to join the reading.

Matthew W. Schmeer’s work has appeared in Two Hawks Quarterly, The Rush, Hartskill Review, Gyroscope Review, Redactions, Poetry South, Slipstream, Sliver of Stone Magazine, Marathon Literary Review, Really System, Panoply, indicia, Slippery Elm, Talking River, Surreal Poetics, Cream City Review, Natural Bridge, 2Riverview, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere, including public transit art installations in St. Louis, Missouri. He is the author of the chapbook Twenty-One Cents (Pudding House, 2002). While his other poetry manuscripts have been rejected by some of the finest small press publishers for being too weird and too quirky, he is active in publishing indie press roleplaying game materials, which is so niche that being weird and quirky is an asset. He is a Professor of English at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, where he has taught composition, creative writing, and writing for video games since 2004. He holds an MFA from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, where he won the MFA Prize in Poetry and was mentored by Mary Troy, Howard Schwartz, and Steven Schreiner. He edited and published the now-defunct online literary journals Poetry Ink and Poetry Midwest, and currently maintains too many personal writing blog projects, including his current hot messes Poem Shots (https://poemshots.wordpress.com), Me & Alfred Roanoke (https://meandalfredroanoke.wordpress.com/), and Notes from a Poemnaut (https://mwschmeer.vivaldi.net/).

Steve Werkmeister was born and raised in Nebraska, which is basically Kansas, just norther. He studied medieval and Renaissance literature at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has published in various literary magazines over the years and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize a few years ago for the short story “Going Home.” His collection of short stories, Wrecked: A Novel in Fragments, is available through Amazon, and many of his poems can be found on his poetry blog, Noonday Devils (https://sw1028.wordpress.com/). He also has a literature-focused blog called Steves of Grass (https://stevesofgrass.wordpress.com/). Steve is a professor at Johnson County Community College and lives with his family in Lawrence.