In its 41st year, the 2025 Salina Spring Poetry Series features a lineup of accomplished poets who will read in downtown Salina. In-person readings will occur at 7 pm on Tuesdays in April at Red Fern Booksellers (106 S Santa Fe Ave).
Since its founding in 1984 by poet Patricia Traxler, the series celebrates National Poetry Month each April and serves as a meeting point for national, regional, and local poets and appreciators of poetry. Celebrating poetic perspectives in the community, each reading entertains and provokes thought on critical issues. The series integrates diverse poetic voices, mirroring social discussions and artistic expressions. Over the years, it has hosted Pulitzer Prize winners and U.S. Poet Laureates, alongside many Kansas Poet Laureates, regionally significant poets, and new voices.
The series this year is sponsored by Salina Arts & Humanities and was curated by Traci Brimhall, Kansas Poet Laureate. Admission to each reading will be $5 at the door and free for students with ID.
“Poets have a wonderful ability to reflect our humanity and strengthen our understanding of each other,” said Brad Anderson, Executive Director of Salina Arts & Humanities. “The readings and invitations for the public to engage are a rewarding experience.”
“I’m grateful to be working with Salina Arts & Humanities again for the 41st season of the Salina Spring Poetry Series,” says Brimhall. “It's another year where there are five Tuesdays in the month, so it’ll be a month with a wonderful and packed set of Kansas poets. There are so many fantastic writers here, and I think this year’s group represents a great range of voices.”
The lineup of poets for the 2025 Salina Spring Poetry Series includes:
April 1 - Sam Taylor is the author of three books of poems, Body of the World (Ausable Press), Nude Descending an Empire (Pitt Poetry Series), and The Book of Fools: An Essay in Memoir and Verse (Negative Capability). Ranging in theme from ecology and social justice to mysticism and eros, his poems have appeared in such journals as The New Republic, AGNI, and The Kenyon Review, and his work has been recognized with the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, the Dobie Paisano Fellowship, the Anne Halley Prize, and more than a dozen fellowship residencies. A native of Miami, he has been a wilderness caretaker in the mountains of northern New Mexico and traveled around the world, and he currently tends a wild garden in Kansas, where he is a Professor in the MFA Program at Wichita State.
April 8 - Brad Aaron Modlin is the Reynolds Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at University of Nebraska, Kearney, where he teaches undergrads & in the online master’s program in CW. His words appear in The Pushcart Prize 2025, Brevity, Poetry Unbound, The Slowdown, orchestral scores, art exhibits, & social-media viral moments. His poetry book Everyone at This Party Has Two Names is available from Black Lawrence Press. His work is often about hope or embarrassment because he believes in humans’ goodness & is very clumsy at the gym.
April 15 - Cydnee A. Reese is a multi-hyphenate artist and philanthropist whose work spans music, poetry, film, and social impact. She authored Ebony Blankets: A Collection of Poems by the Artist Called Wanderer and edited Joyce Lee's Dancing in the Presence of Men: A Book of Love & Lovers. Her children’s book, A Lot of Miles, is used in public school curricula as a tool to enhance literacy and introduce empathy. Under the stage name Wanderer, she has won poetry slams nationwide, including at the renowned Nuyorican Poets Café in New York. As singer-songwriter Cydnée Alyxzan, she has collaborated internationally with artists from six countries and is a two-time International Songwriting Competition semi-finalist. Driven by her belief in art’s transformative power, she continues to inspire change through her creative pursuits.
April 22 - Luisa Muradyan is originally from Odesa, Ukraine and is the author of I Make Jokes When I'm Devastated (Bridwell Press, 2025) When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2027), and American Radiance (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). She is the winner of the 2017 Raz/ Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize and a member of the Cheburashka Collective. Additional work can be found at Best American Poetry, the Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, and Only Poems among others.
April 29 - Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of three full-length collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches high school English in Lawrence, KS, where she and her husband live with their dogs.