NWC Reporting Page

Zedeka Poindexter is a North Omaha-born and raised writer and performer. She is currently completing her second fellowship with the Union of Contemporary Art and working as a teaching artist with the Nebraska Writers Collective. Zedeka is the first woman and the only woman of color to be named Omaha City Poetry Slam champion. As a member of Omaha’s poetry slam team, she qualified for the semi-finals at the National Poetry Slam.

Zedeka is a two-time winner of the Omaha Arts and Entertainment Award trophy for best performance poet and has been a featured performer at the awards show. She has also been featured in performances at the John Beasley Theater, the Great Plains Theater Conference, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and Metropolitan Community College.

Her written work can be found in print and online anthologies, including The Metropolitan, Slamma Lamma Ding Dong: An Anthology of Nebraska Slam Poetry, and Alight: Best-Loved Poems from the 2013 Women of the World Poetry Slam.

Stacey Waite has been with the NWC for ten years and worked as a coach, a CTA, and now as Lincoln City Coordinator for Louder than a Bomb-Great Plains.

Stacey is also Associate Professor of English and Graduate Chair at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln and is the author of: Choke (winner of the Frank O’Hara Prize for Poetry), Love Poem to Androgyny, the lake has no saint (Winner of the Snowbound Prize), and Butch Geography (Tupelo Press, 2013), and Teaching Queer: Radical Possibilities for Writing and Knowing (University of Pittsburgh, 2017).

Some of Stacey's favorite poets are Andrea Gibson, Claudia Rankine, Jericho Brown, and DA Powell. Stacey is a big fan of campfires, Husker Volleyball, and the expanse of Nebraska's open sky. Originally from New York, it took Stacey a while to warm up to the Midwest, but the days of slow right turns and saying "ope" have arrived, and Stacey is basically a Nebraskan now.

Catherine King goes by Cat and is a Teaching Artist with Nebraska Writers Collective in the Louder Than a Bomb program. She also works at Metropolitan Community College as an instructional designer.

She grew up in Phoenix, Arizona with six younger siblings. She has experienced many difficult situations, including moving a lot, divorce, grief, domestic abuse, rape and sexual assault, abuse by a teacher, coming out as queer, being poor, and being bullied.

Cat has created a life for herself that is self-supporting, joyful, safe, and full of friendship and love. She writes a lot and reads a lot and avoids social media. She lives alone with her dog Morty and her cat Tiny who cuddle with her on the couch while she reads and watches television. If you need help with a difficult situation, you can reach out to Cat.

One of Cat's favorite poems is "The Girl Who Becomes Gasoline" by Reagan Myers.