POETRY READING
with Steven Schneider and Nynke Salverda Passi
Café Paradiso, Fairfield, IA, 7:30 PM, June 13th, 2026

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Steven Schneider is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) where he founded the MFA Program in Creative Writing. Steven's poems have been published widely and featured in NPR Morning Edition, American Life in Poetry, and Highlights Magazine. He is the co-creator with his artist wife Reefka of two bilingual poetry-art exhibits and books, Borderlines: Drawing Border Lives/ Fronteras: dibujando las vidas fronterizas and The Magic of Mariachi / La Magia del Mariachi. He is also the author and editor of three scholarly books on contemporary American Poetry. Steven has read his work widely, including at Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City and more recently at Grolier's Poetry Bookshop in Harvard Square. In 2023 he received the Distinguished Career Award from UTRGV.

Nynke Salverda Passi is the founder and director of the Soul Bone℠ Literary Center and Festival. She is also the co-chair of the English dept. and founder and director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Maharishi International University. She has been published in Tupelo Quarterly, CALYX, Gulf Coast, Poetry Breakfast, Life & Legends, and more. Her work has been anthologized in The Anthology of New England Writers, River of Earth & Sky (Blue Light Press), and Carrying the Branch (Glass Lyre Press), among other places. She was a finalist in the Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize of The Missouri Review in ‘14 and in ‘22. Her first book has been accepted by Blue Light Press.