Former Ord Resident and Great Plains Poet Mark Sanders will be hosting a reading of his poetry in Ord on November 20.

Mark is a Great Plains native–born, raised, and educated in Nebraska, where he took his first Ph.D. in 1989; he holds a second Ph.D. in Higher Education Leadership from the University of Idaho (2013).  His poems, stories, critical essays, and creative essays have appeared in publications in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, including Glimmer Train, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, Shenandoah, River Teeth, and Western American Literature.  Among his books of poetry are Before We Lost Our Ways, Here in the Big Empty, The Suicide, Conditions of Grace: New and Selected Poems, and Landscapes, with Horses.  His critical publications include Riddled with Light:  Metaphor in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats and The Weight of the Weather: Regarding the Poetry of Ted Kooser.  His short story collection is Why Guineas Fly.

In 2007, he received the Mildred Bennett Award from the Nebraska Center for the Book for fostering Nebraska’s literary heritage, in part for his study on Great Plains writers but also for his 30-year career of publishing Great Plains poets via his Sandhills Press imprint.