Past Events

Join us for a very special performance featuring area children in this exciting and innovative collaboration with Blixt Locally Grown and The Valley Child Development Center! Children will spend the week of July 12–16 at the child development center working with theater artists from Blixt, and they will share what they learned with the community at the Red Cloud Opera House on Friday, July 16 at 6:00 p.m. during a special performance.

Spend an evening with Nebraska author Chris Harding Thornton as she reads from her debut novel, Pickard County Atlas.

In 2021, the National Willa Cather Center commissioned Animal Engine Theatre Company to create

We will explore Willa Cather's work in relation to newspapers and magazines during this virtual conference and with select on-site activities.

“The illustration of books, and even more of magazines,
may be said to have been born in our time, so far as
variety and abundance are the signs of it . . . .”
Henry James, Picture and Text (1893)

Join us for a fascinating conversation with 2021 One Book One Nebraska author James Kimble!

This exhibition showcases the work of artist Karen Vierneisel in which she explores the themes and settings of Cather's novels and the places she knew during her lifetime.

Join 66th annual Willa Cather Spring Conference Academic Director Dr. Charles Johanningsmeier and Karim Muasher, Co-Artistic Director of Animal Engine Theatre Company, for a conversation about creating new work from Willa Cather's periodical texts. This talk is a great opportunity to connect with Spring Conference leadership and performers as they share their process for adapting serialized Cather texts into a theatrical performance, as well as how Cather's relationship with popular print media informs literary scholarship.

Join us as Joan Wells, Women's World Champion Trick Roper, presents a unique performance of roping tricks just like those seen in the early Wild West shows and rodeos.