Become a Great Plains storyteller!
This annual program at the Center for Great Plains Studies invites students to apply to be our Student Storyteller in Residence. Over the course of the year, the storyteller will produce a visual and/or written project that helps tell the story of the region by working with Center mentors. The student will receive a one-time stipend of $1,275, an office at the Center for the academic year, mentorship, and help publishing their project. Project examples include: a podcast, essays, poetry, website, film, visual artwork, film, etc. The application opens each April and residency starts fall semester.
2023-24 Student Storyteller in Residence: Karla Hernandez Torrijos
UNL undergraduate student Karla Hernandez Torrijos (she/her) is a poet and workshop facilitator who has been invited to read in venues across Nebraska, including The Bay, El Museo Latino, and The UNL Wick Alumni Center. The recipient of the 2022-2023 Irby F. Wood Prize for Poetry and the 2020-2021 Vreeland Award for Poetry, her writing interrogates our understanding of home, displacement, and the liminal space in between. Karla was the 2021-2022 Creative in Community Resident for The LUX Center for the Arts and is the inaugural Student Storyteller in Residence for The Center for Great Plains Studies. Her work can be found in Preposition: An Undercurrent Anthology.
This program is funded by the Michael Farrell Fund for Student Storytelling, administered through the University of Nebraska Foundation.
Michael Farrell has been a storyteller all his life. He spent most of his career as an award-winning public media documentarian focused on the culture, history, and environment of Nebraska and the Great Plains. Whether it’s the Platte Basin Timelapse project or another topic suited to the Great Plains, Michael hopes to inspire students to orient themselves toward storytelling. In honor of Michael’s career and the many people who supported him in doing what he loves year after year, he is establishing this fund.
Karla Hernandez Torrijos