The Writers Place Poetry Reading Series was initiated by Thomas Zvi Wilson in 2001. Its objective was to broaden outreach for The Writers Place and create an additional venue for poets to read and audiences to listen. The series has extended opportunities for audiences from the urban core to the suburbs.

The sponsors are The Writers Place and the Johnson County Central Resource Library. When Wilson's health failed, his wife, Jeanie Wilson, a Writers Place board member, assumed responsibility for the reading series.

The poetry readings are held at 7:00 p.m. the third Tuesday of every month (except November and December) at the Johnson County Central Resource Library, 9875 W. 87th St., Overland Park. The events are free and light refreshments are included.

For further information, call 913-495-9107.

Brian Daldorph teaches at the University of Kansas and the Douglas County Jail. He has also taught in England, France, Zambia, Senegal, and Japan. He edits Coal City Review and Douglas County Jail Blues: Poetry from Inmates at Douglas County Correctional Facility. His most recent books are From the Inside Out: Sonnets (Woodley, 2008) and Jail Time (Original Plus, 2009).

Elizabeth Schultz, who retired from the University of Kansas in 2001, balances scholarship on Herman Melville and on the environment with writing essays and poems about the people and places she loves. Her book, Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth-Century American Art, examines the relationship between Melville's novel and the large and diverse range of art it has inspired. Recently she published a memoir, Shoreline: Seasons at the Lake; essays in The Nature of Kansas Lands; two collections of poems, Conversations and Her Voice; and a collection of short stories, The White-Skin Deer: Hoopa Stories. In 2007 she was a Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer in American literature in Beijing.