Please join us in a virtual night of celebration for the release of Katie Jean Shinkle's poetry chapbook TRANSFERENCE, with guest appearances by Ginger Ko, Megan Kaminski, and Jessica Rae Bergamino.

5pm Central Time on Zoom

Join Lawrence Transit, poet and professor Megan Kaminski, and Lawrence Public Library in our kickoff for the third annual Poet Laureate program, a Summer Ride and Write workshop! This year's Poet Laureate program invites poets to explore how we create and discover belonging through the pathways we travel—both literal and metaphorical. Whether it's the bus route that carries us to work each morning, the walking path that leads us to a friend's door, or the emotional journey that brings us closer to community, we all navigate routes that shape our sense of place and connection.

Participants in this writing workshop on wheels will meet at Central Station Lobby, then travel through the city via Route 8 on Lawrence Transit’s electric bus. Find inspiration together in the sights, sounds, and connections we make as we traverse the city to our destination -- a poetry workshop led by poet and professor Megan Kaminski! The workshop will be hosted at Cedar and Sage, located in Stidham Union on Haskell Campus. 

Inspired by our ride and guided by prompts to help us see our everyday lives through new eyes, we'll write and share together. Participants will leave with a poem -- and an invitation to submit poems for the Lawrence Transit poet laureate program! The event will end back at Central Station, where riders will leave with their poem and prompts for ongoing writing.

w/ Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Ching-In Chen, Cassie Mira, and Juliana Chow

at ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment) Biennial Conference

This panel thinks about air, water, and soil as routes/roots of inhabitation and entanglements for humans and nonhumans from a diasporic perspective. Taking the atmosphere as the medium of routes/roots, we share work that both extends into the cosmic stratosphere and flows with the dynamics of the earth and its respiration through living things. We will consider how engagements with this broad conception of atmospheres can help articulate a diasporic environmental humanities. Specifically: What changes when we think about diaspora and its migrations through elemental flows? What forms of air, intimacies, and inequalities begin to come into relief with a diasporic practice? In particular, we are interested in practices of care and an environmental ethics in relation to the atmosphere. We offer the framing of the diasporic environmental humanities to think with and through atmospheric loss, rupture, and displacement. We will also explore how the diasporic environmental humanities offers ideas for care, kinship, and ancestry through thinking with the atmosphere and air.

My presentation is entitled: An Inland Sea: Ancestors, Deep Time, and Interspecies Care

Megan Kaminski | University of Kansas

Aubrey Streit Krug | The Land Institute

In this pre-conference workshop, we’ll discuss and generate ideas for publicly-engaged environmental humanities projects and practices that feature plant care. By immersing ourselves in place with plants, we’ll foster thinking on the projects we’ll be sharing and our own well-being at the beginning of a long conference.

Guiding questions:

Why do writers, artists, teachers, and researchers pursue civic engagement projects that center the care and tending of plants? What motivates us?

What kinds of care and work are involved in these projects, across stages of design, implementation, and publication or evaluation? How might this care and work be shared and supported?

What are some strategies for building and sustaining relationships with project partners, such as libraries, museums, gardens and farms, non-profit organizations, civic agencies, and advocacy groups? What are some practical ways to engage communities with plants?

What creative and critical insights emerge from public plant humanities projects? What do these projects lead to?

Pre-work: Each workshop participant will be invited to contribute a relevant project example along with a text or source that motivates their work, and to bring a nascent project idea of their own.

Prairie * Ritual * Alchemy

Join us for an evening of poetry and reflection with Megan Kaminski, exploring the intersection of prairie ecosystems, personal healing, and ecological relationships through the lens of plant-human connections in the Great Plains. ✨

Megan is a Poet and Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Kansas.
Her work blends writing, art, and contemplative practices, grounded in place-based and environmental justice approaches.

She’s the author of five books, including Gentlewomen (Noemi, 2020),
Quietly Between (A Viewing Place, 2022),
and Prairie Divination (Sunseen, 2022).

LLMs, Creativity, and the Poetics of Encounter

How LLMs are changing our relationship with creativity

Panelists:

Megan Kaminski, Abraham Weil, Gabriel John Boucher, SK Reed, and Emily Mulvaney (moderator)

Artists:

Sean Nash, Gabriel John Boucher, SK Reed, Emily Mulvaney, Kelly Sucena

Listening to Place: Spring Ephemerals in the Earles Woodlands

Kansas Land Trust

Connecting with the natural world can provide a wellspring of knowledge and inspiration, enabling us to (re)discover strategies for living in the world, to grieve and heal after loss, and realign our thinking toward kinship, community, and sustainability. In this beginner-friendly nature walk and writing workshop led by poet Megan Kaminski, we’ll engage in deep listening practices to tap into the knowledge shared by the world around us and the often-unheard wisdom already present in our own bodies and spirits. As spring brings us longer days and tender green shoots of new life, we’ll listen to the growth occurring all around us to help us clear out the clutter of last year’s dormant period and make way for new life. Participants should bring something to write (and/or draw) with and on.

A Turnsol Garden Club event

This talk and poetry reading explores the intersection of prairie ecosystems, personal healing, and ecological relationships through the lens of plant-human connections in eastern Kansas. Drawing from experiences as a gardener and herbalist, Kaminski weaves together discussions of native plants, disability, and neurodivergence to illuminate how developing deep relationships with the natural world can transform trauma and foster belonging. The presentation combines personal narrative, poetry, and environmental philosophy to examine how plant relationships offer new models of vulnerability, care, and grace.

Invited talk on Queer Ecologies and Research for Out in STEM at KU, a student-led organization dedicated to fostering a safe space for LGBTQIA+ students through professional development and community-building.

SPRING 2025 VISITING WRITERS SERIES

MG 125

Alyse Bensel is the author of Spoil and Rare Wondrous Things as well as three chapbooks, including Lies to Tell the Body. Her poems and essays have appeared in Cream City Review, Pleiades, South Dakota Review, and West Branch. Originally born and raised in south-central Pennsylvania, she now lives in the North Carolina mountains, where she is an associate professor of English at Brevard College and director of the Looking Glass Rock Writers' Conference.

Megan Kaminski is a poet and essayist. She is the author of three books of poetry, Gentlewomen, Deep City, and Desiring Map and two artists books, Prairie Divination, a book of illustrated essays and oracle deck, and Quietly Between, a co-authored collection of poetry and photography. A Professor in the Creative Writing and Environmental Studies with a courtesy appointment in Visual Art at the University of Kansas, she works at the intersections of plant studies, somatics, and ceremony.

Goodall Visiting Fellow in Environmental Studies Talk

This talk and poetry reading explores the intersection of prairie ecosystems, personal healing, and ecological relationships through the lens of plant-human connections in eastern Kansas. Drawing from experiences as a gardener and herbalist, Kaminski weaves together discussions of native plants, disability, and neurodivergence to illuminate how developing deep relationships with the natural world can transform trauma and foster belonging. The presentation combines personal narrative, poetry, and environmental philosophy to examine how plant relationships offer new models of vulnerability, care, and grace.

Engaged Reading | Time is a Mother, by Ocean Vuong

3:30pm Thursday, October 31 – Hall Center for the Humanities

Healthy democracy fosters an exchange of ideas across experiences and knowledge. One way to offer a platform for this is to root discussion in shared reading and collaborative understanding. Engaged Reading is offered to promote learning and inquiry across populations at the University, through common texts. Inspired by the expansive reach of the KU Reads / Common Book program, and curated with goals of generous and generative conversation, this series will feature excerpts and texts presented with discussion stewards. 

‘Time is a Mother,’ by Ocean Vuong
          Discussion led by Akiko Takeyama (Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies/Center for East Asian Studies) and Megan Kaminski (English/Environmental Studies). It is not necessary to have attended the September 26 event with Ocean Vuong, hosted by The Commons.

Supported by the Hall Center for the Humanities, KU Libraries, the Spencer Museum of Art, the Institute for Policy & Social Research, and The Commons

new material books at united colors gallery

in celebration of SK Reed's exhibition The Unreal

poetry reading featuring: Bob Sykora, Hyejung Kook, Jordan Stempleman, and Megan Kaminski

Listening to Prairie: Conspiring With Plants

What does it mean to evade wide-spread agricultural cultivation? What does it mean to see plants as collaborators and to recognize the agency of non-human beings? This project is grounded in listening to plants, looking to them, and thinking with their call to place. Collaborating with the non-human co-inhabitants of Douglas County open space containing remnant prairie, with a special focus on native plants, Megan shares interactive, deep listening prompts, poems, and photographs geared toward opening our hearts towards sharing wonder and reciprocal love and joy with plants and other non-human co-inhabitants.

Project funded by: an Showcasing Open Space through Accessible Adventure (SOSAA) grant, funding from the Douglas County Heritage Conservation Council and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Stories for All project at the University of Kansas’s Hall Center for the Humanities

Join Lawrence Transit and poet and professor Megan Kaminski in our kickoff for Lawrence Transit’s second annual Poet Laureate program, a Summer Ride and Write. Registration is capped at 25 attendees. To register email info@lawrencetransit.org.

We will travel through Lawrence via Route 8 on one of Lawrence Transit’s new electric buses and find inspiration together in the sights, sounds, and connections we make as we traverse the city making our way to Fields & Ivy. At the brewery, we’ll be guided by prompts to help us to see ourselves and our everyday lives through fresh eyes.

We will write together and have opportunities to share our words. Participants will leave with a poem and prompts to inspire ongoing writing, as well as an invitation to submit poems for the Lawrence Transit Poet Laureate program.

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For this year’s Poet Laureate program, we encourage poems around themes of community, transportation, and home. We welcome everyone in honoring the movements, places, and feelings that tell the stories of our days. We invite participants to find sources of inspiration in the theme, prompts, or to join us in our workshop at Fields & Ivy on August 30th to write and share a poem.

The Lawrence Transit Poet Laureate program offers the chance for local poets of any age and their poems to be featured on Lawrence Transit electric buses. To be considered, submit a transit-related poem by September 30, 2024.

Connecting with the natural world can provide a wellspring of knowledge and inspiration, enabling us to (re)discover strategies for living in the world, to grieve and heal after loss, and realign our thinking toward kinship, community, and sustainability. This beginner-friendly nature and poetry walk will be oriented to connecting with the more-than-human world through literature in the environmental humanities. By the words of poets, writers, and our own senses, this hike will engage with diverse habitats throughout Kansas to help participants listen to the often-unseen wisdom around us.

Young Writers Workshop, Kansas State University

Poetry Reading w. Kristi Maxwell. Details TBA.

Featured Reader: Megan Kaminski. Open Mic begins at 6:30pm.

In this writing workshop led by poet Megan Kaminski, we’ll engage in deep listening practices to tap into the knowledge shared by the world around us and the often-unheard wisdom already present in our own bodies and spirits. As spring brings us longer days and tender green shoots of new life, we’ll listen to the growth occurring all around us to help us clear out the clutter of last year’s dormant period and make way for new writing. If weather permits, we may go outside, so please dress accordingly. This class is part of the Written Storytelling Certificate Programs as a Writing Elective. Please note this program will take place in person in the Story Center Historic Home. Please make sure to register the number of guests in your party. Registration is required and space is limited.

Climate Feminism and Other Ways of Leading around Climate Change

-How might we describe Climate Feminism? What is it not?

-How do these principles and practices show up in your work?

-What kinds of possibilities might feminist-led efforts make space for?

-How are youth-led efforts embracing feminist principles?

-What other forms of knowledge should enter the conversation?

Register here

In this workshop, a group of faculty and staff at the forefront of inclusive practices at KU will share their innovations and approaches to disability and neurodivergence inclusion and trauma-informed pedagogy. With Dea Follmer, CTE/Psychology; Megan Kaminski, English/Environmental Studies; and RB Perelmutter, Jewish Studies/ Slavic & Eurasian Languages & Literatures.

Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry and the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017). Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.

Camille will be hosted in conversation with Imani Wadud, PhD Candidate in American Studies & Megan Kaminski, Professor of English and Environmental Studies.

 Register at https://bit.ly/DungyKU

Featuring

Vidhu Aggarwal, Megan Kaminski, Ashwini Bhasi, Teresa Carmody, Angela Peñaredondo, Bishakh Som, Olivia Muenz, Ronaldo Wilson, Ginger Ko, Emily Brandt, Jameelah Lang, and Petra Kuppers

Offsite reading featuring:

Michele Battiste, Teresa Carmody, Megan Kaminski, Kristen Nelson, and Hoa Nguyen