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Riverside Public Library’s Humanity Series is back! Join Inlandia Institute in partnership with Riverside Public Library for a four-part spin around the Inland Empire with local writers Larry Burns, Nikia Chaney, Rebecca K. O’Connor, Teresa Rhyne, Susan Straight, Douglas McCulloh, Isabel Quintero, and Casandra Lopez.

This series is free and open to the public, but registration is required: https://tinyurl.com/HumanitiesHour202

“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.” ― Joan Didion

The scheduled speakers will offer insights, observations, and tools for writing about the location we call home – Inland Southern California.

January 5: Larry Burns and Nikia Chaney

January 19: Rebecca K. O’Connor and Teresa J. Rhyne

February 2: Susan Straight and Douglas McCulloh

February 16: Isabel Quintero and Casandra Lopez

Larry Burns draws inspiration and ideas from the heady mixture of sights, sounds, peoples, and places of his hometown, Riverside, California. He is an active community leader, booster, and all-around fan of the recreation, entertainment, arts, and culture ready to be discovered across the Inland Empire. He is a founding member of the Inlandia Institute, and teaches English at Riverside City College and Humanities at Southern New Hampshire University. His second book with Reedy Press Publishers, Secret Inland Empire, is available through Barnes & Noble and other booksellers.

Poet Nikia Chaney is the author of us mouth (University of Hell Press, 2018) and two chapbooks, Sis Fuss (2012, Orange Monkey Publishing) and ladies, please (2012, Dancing Girl Press). She has served as Inlandia Literary Laureate (2016-2018). She is founding editor of shufpoetry, an online journal for experimental poetry, and founding editor of Jamii Publishing, a publishing imprint dedicated to fostering community among poets and writers. She has been published in the Portland Review, Welter, Vinyl, Saranac Review, Kweli, 491, and Apogee.

Riverside Public Library’s Humanity Series is back! Join Inlandia Institute in partnership with Riverside Public Library for a four-part spin around the Inland Empire with local writers Larry Burns, Nikia Chaney, Rebecca K. O’Connor, Teresa Rhyne, Susan Straight, Douglas McCulloh, Isabel Quintero, and Casandra Lopez.

This series is free and open to the public, but registration is required: https://tinyurl.com/HumanitiesHour202

“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.” ― Joan Didion

The scheduled speakers will offer insights, observations, and tools for writing about the location we call home – Inland Southern California.

January 5: Larry Burns and Nikia Chaney

January 19: Rebecca K. O’Connor and Teresa J. Rhyne

February 2: Susan Straight and Douglas McCulloh

February 16: Isabel Quintero and Casandra Lopez

Rebecca K. O'Connor is Development Director at Rivers & Lands Conservancy, a falconer and an author. She has published reference books, pet owner's manuals, novels and a memoir. Her falconry memoir, LIFT, was published by Red Hen Press. Essays of her writing have been published in Los Angeles Times Magazine (in its West incarnation), South Dakota Review, Iron Horse Review and divide. He work has also been included in New California Writing 2011 and 2012. O'Connor's most recent novel is We Were Wilder, a post-apocalyptic wilderness journey.

Teresa J. Rhyne is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Dog Lived (and So Will I), a surprisingly hilarious memoir about her dog and her both surviving cancer. The sequel, The Dogs Were Rescued (and So Was I), won the Pat Santi Memorial award from the Dog Writers Association of America. Her newest book, Poppy in the Wild: A Lost Dog, Fifteen Hundred Acres of Wilderness and the Dogged Determination that Brought Her Home continues her tradition of writing humorously about tragedies that happen to her and her dogs. Tragedy plus time plus cute dogs equal heartfelt comedy.