Visiting Author - Garrett Peck - The Bright Edges of the World: Willa Cather and Her Archbishop
2026-06-09 17:30 - 18:30 (America/Chicago) | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
On Tuesday, June 9th, we welcome author and historian Garrett Peck, from New Mexico, to Francie & Finch Bookshop! He will be presenting his book, The Bright Edges of the World: Willa Cather and Her Archbishop. The book explores Cather’s travels to the Southwest that inspired her to write her “best book” (her words), Death Comes for the Archbishop. We can’t wait to see you there!
Call or visit our website to order your copy now!
About the Book:
Author and historian Garrett Peck traces Willa Cather’s adventures in the Southwest and how they influenced her best book. Six months before she died, Willa Cather called her 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop her “best book.” The Atlantic magazine concurred, including Archbishop on its Great American Novels list in 2024. A perennial favorite for people who love New Mexico, the novel tells an unusual story of two French priests and best friends serving on the American frontier before the arrival of the railroad. This Western work of fiction is loosely based on two historical figures, Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Bishop Joseph Machebeuf.
In The Bright Edges of the World, Garrett Peck explores how Cather’s travels to the Southwest inspired her writing. She visited the Southwest six times between 1912 and 1926, and from these journeys came three novels, the last of which was Death Comes for the Archbishop. Through Cather’s letters, postcards, articles, and interviews, Peck traces how integral travel was to Cather’s imagination while highlighting the vital contribution that Cather’s longtime partner, Edith Lewis, made to the story. The Bright Edges of the World is richly illustrated to highlight Cather and Lewis’s extensive Southwestern adventures.
Though Archbishop is a work of fiction, Peck explores how Cather wove some of the most legendary people in New Mexican history into her novel, such as Archbishop Lamy, Kit Carson, and Padre Antonio José Martínez, while subtly hinting toward the complexity of Pueblo Indian and Navajo (Diné) faith. Archbishop is a multicultural novel that reflects the diversity of New Mexico’s people.
Death Comes for the Archbishop remains a timeless book of friendship on the American frontier and an inspiration for people who, as Cather wrote, “have gone a-journeying in New Mexico on the trail of the Archbishop.”
About the Author:
Garrett Peck is an author, independent historian, and tour guide in Santa Fe, specializing in adventure travel and historic and cultural interpretation. He leads the Willa Cather’s Santa Fe tour, teaches stargazing, and leads many other tours.
The author of nine books about American history, Garrett’s latest is The Bright Edges of the World: Willa Cather and Her Archbishop (University of New Mexico Press, March 2026). The book explores Cather’s travels to the Southwest that inspired her to write her “best book” (her words), Death Comes for the Archbishop.
Garrett has lectured for the Library of Congress, the National Archives, Smithsonian Associates, the New Mexico History Museum, historical societies, and literary clubs. A native Californian, he graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and George Washington University and is a U.S. Army veteran.
Praise for The Bright Edges of the World:
“The Bright Edges of the World: Willa Cather and Her Archbishop is both a deep dive into one of Cather’s most beloved classics and also an exhilarating guided trek through a rugged slice of Southwestern literary history.” – Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of Woman of Light: A Novel

“A well-researched and timely synopsis of the genesis of Cather’s Archbishop. The contextualization of her ‘best book’ through historical analysis and biography is refreshing. Peck thoughtfully traverses the captivating landscape and diverse cultures of the Southwest alongside Willa Cather, her partner Edith Lewis, and an assemblage of real and fictionalized characters.” – Ashley Olson, executive director of the National Willa Cather Center
“An entertaining and informative popular history of New Mexico as well as a strong work of literary scholarship.” – Gary Scharnhorst, author of Bret Harte: Opening the American Literary West

Visiting Author - Lisa Knopp - Ravelings: Essays on Love, Loss, and Wonder (American Lives )
2026-06-13 16:30 - 17:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Join us as we welcome author Lisa Knopp on June 13th at 4:30! She will read from her recent book of essays, Ravelings, published by the University of Nebraska Press.
To order a copy of the book, follow the link HERE.

About the Book:

In Ravelings, Lisa Knopp takes up an older, opposing meaning of the verb “ravel”—“to entangle”—as she explores the deaths and departures of loved ones and the rituals by which we mourn and honor them, while contemplating her relationships with writing, spirituality, sense of home, aging, desire, and the relationship between body and mind. Entangled in these losses and changes, Knopp experiences wonder, joy, connectivity, and wholeness.

In these nimble and companionable essays, Knopp considers hunger and fullness through ethical, disordered, and mindful eating; awakens to common magic through two chance encounters with a magician; and finds humility and empowerment as an unpartnered sixty-year-old woman in a ballroom dance class filled with young couples. Knopp comprehends her experiences with nuance, revealing time and again that the same ravel of text can encompass the blending in a single moment of the exotic and mundane, of fullness and want, of love and abhorrence, of desire and contentment, of freedom and bondage, of severance and connection, and of the creative act as both an evocation and an imposition.

About the Author:
Lisa Knopp is a professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She is the author of eight books, including From Your Friend, Carey Dean: Letters from Nebraska’s Death Row, Interior Places (Nebraska, 2008), and The Nature of Home: A Lexicon and Essays (Nebraska, 2002).

Praise for Ravelings
“When I finished this book, I just wanted to write as my book review, ‘Buy this book. Read it.”’1,200 times on the page. ” — Carolyn-Roy Bornstein Hippocampus Review

“[Knopp is] well-read, offering perspectives from other writers, and she’s at home in the world of nature after years of writing essays on that topic. Her metaphors and insights are apt and moving, making this collection a joy.”—Booklist

“Lisa Knopp’s essays invite us to notice the things of daily life while pointing us to what shimmers just beyond our line of vision. Knopp is clear-eyed and reverent as she harnesses examples from art and etymology, memory studies and theology, to explore loss, aging, and the rich layers of human appetite. These essays embody the holy work of paying attention, of forging connection, and of letting go. A luminous, tender collection by a master of the form.”—Sonja Livingston, author of The Virgin of Prince Street

“You want to go deep into Lisa Knopp’s essays. They’re not meant for a quick read. Detail is all. Like the impressionists she refers to, each one is itself, often without need for a story. Yet the rich story of her life runs through like a stream—the death of a beloved cat, the death of parents, eating doves, the comfort of a giant sweet potato, consulting the almanac, finding a lost car. These beautifully written essays are a record of a life lived with sensitivity and wisdom. Her essay ‘Still Life with Peaches’ is a map for how to see, how to find words for close-seeing. I couldn’t put this book down.”—Fleda Brown, author of The End of the Clockwork Universe

“Ravelings beautifully knits together the complexities of the head, the entanglements of the heart, and the all-too-human hungers that hit us right in the gut. These essays delve into the rich contradictions of singleness and connection, balance and chance, fullness and lack—always with a sense of wonder and intellectual grace. Thoughtful, poignant, and beautifully written, this is a book I will return to again and again.”—Randon Billings Noble, author of Be with Me Always: Essays

“In this collection of virtuoso essays, Lisa Knopp puzzles and ravels topics ranging from encountering her mother’s dead body to dancing with a broom. The lowly sweet potato, the exalted peach, the art of Renoir and Lassnig, all warrant her probing consideration. The essay on a familiar feeling with the little-known name of velleity is one of many startling discoveries lifted from the ordinary. With every deep dive into these streams of her life, we vibrate like a tuning fork, resonating and enriching our understanding of the intricate balances and delicious contradictions of everyday life.”—Pamela Carter Joern, author of At the Corner of Past and Future: A Collection of Life Stories

Pineapple Days Annual Sale
2026-06-18 00:00 | NE
Shop downtown merchants Tsuru, Threads, Lincoln Running CO., Stella, A Novel Idea, Gomez Art Supply, Metro Art Gallery, RayGun, Ruby Begonias, The Framing Company and Underground Printing.

More to come!

Book of Poetry Launch - Nicole Lachat in conversation with Ber Anena - The Red We Silk
2026-06-30 17:30 - 18:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Join us in welcoming poet Nicole Lachat as she presents her new book of poetry The Red We Silk. Nicole will be joined in a special conversation with fellow writer, Ber Anena. This event will be held on Tuesday, June 30th and is open to the public!
To order your copy of The Red We Silk, follow the link HERE!
About the Book:
The Red We Silk collects inherited migrations and the weight of familial journeys into a lyric investigation of displacement and longing. Memory abides in the body and the body in memory, propelling the speaker through geographical and spiritual landscapes, desires, and griefs toward the transformative work of discovery. Tender, attentive, and multivocal, these are poems of belonging beyond borders.
About the Author:
Nicole Lachat was born in Edmonton, Canada, to a Peruvian mother and a Swiss father. She holds PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU. Her debut collection, The Red We Silk, was the recipient of the 2024 Michael Waters Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Ruminate Magazine, One by Jacar Press, Birdfeast Magazine, The Puerto Rico Review, and Poets.org, among others. She was awarded the 2022 Wilbur Gaffney Poetry Prize through the Academy of American Poets and received a 2024 Individual Arts Fellowship through the Nebraska Arts Council. She is a mentor for Adroit Journal’s 2026 Summer Mentorship Program. Nicole currently resides in Canada.

About Speaker:
Ber Anena is a writer from Gulu, Uganda. She attended the MFA Writing program at Columbia University and is finalizing a PhD in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she has received the Vreeland Prize for Fiction and the Susan Atefat Peckham Prize for Poetry. Anena’s debut poetry collection, A Nation in Labour, won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa in 2018. Her works appear in or are forthcoming from Transition Magazine, Wasafiri, Prairie Schooner, The Atlantic, adda, Off Assignment and Black Warrior Review. Her prose has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and nominated forthe Pushcart. Anena’s memoir, THE LIES WE TELL FOR AMERICA is out on November 10, 2026 from Flatiron Books by Macmillan.
Praise for collection:
“The Red We Silk is an impressive debut that captures with elegance and ease the truly twenty-first century phenomenon of multiple migrations and cultural intersections as they manifest in the body of a gifted poet. Nicole Lachat frames these considerations within the Peruvian myth of Chasqui, who becomes for her a migrant voicing the poetic implications of uprooting and replanting in different spaces. Lachat’s brilliantly generous poems of deep sentiment and spiritual interrogation explore themes of family, memory, place, and desire with resonant beauty.”–Kwame Dawes
“Reader, this is no ordinary debut. Nicole Lachat knows that all borders are lies. Citizen and immigrant. Land and body. Parent and child. The quick and the dead. Whatever lines you believe in, whatever lines you draw, prepare to have them dissolved. ‘Because you come / ready for war–swearing lightning, swearing / thunder–I come light-footed. I become / leaf.’ Lachat is here to say that no onehas the right to divide us, not even us, that our survival depends on this: knowing we are each other, knowing we can still become our softest selves. The Red We Silk will change you.”–Rebecca Gayle Howell
“In this timely debut, Nicole Lachat’s lyric verve shapes the very ground of ordinary living into a personal history that threads memory with an urgent desire for bonds that survive and transform the temporal, emotional, and otherwise disfiguring work of distance. Arresting and smashing.”–Canisia Lubrin

Book Launch - Pulse by Maria Nazos in Conversation with Debra F. Nordyke
2026-07-16 17:30 - 19:00 | NE
Maria Nazos sits down with Debra Nordyke to talk about her latest book of poetry, Pulse.
Join us for this amazing author event! Book signing to follow the talk.
“Named for the Pulse nightclub shooting and the rhythm of heartbeats, this collection of poems grapples with finding life amid profound losses. The poems of PULSE look deeply into a troubled world, inspecting what makes us suffer and demonstrating how we overcome difficulties. PULSE interrogates painful losses of friends to cancer, harmful politics, hate crimes, and mass shootings, including the 2016 massacre at Pulse nightclub. Maria Nazos examines the life force that continues to pulse relentlessly through a fragmented world, that enables us to flow, breathe, and regenerate, even through grief and loss. From Provincetown beaches and Costa Rican crab shacks to Midwestern plains and a Tampa nightclub, the collection moves through madness, redemption, and love”– Provided by publisher.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Maria Nazos is the author of PULSE (Omnidawn 2026) and The Slow Horizon that Breathes (World Poetry Books, 2023), a collection of translations from the Greek poet Dimitra Kotoula. Her poetry, essays, and translations have appeared in Poets and Writers, Literary Hub, The New Yorker, and other publications. Maria has held a wide range of jobs, including whale-watching boat attendant, table dancer, and, arguably, the worst waitress on Cape Cod. If she spilled Pinot Noir on you, she apologizes. You can find her at www.marianazos.com.
Debra F. Nordyke is a current member of The Writer’s Place of Kansas City and a resident at The Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow.I volunteer my time crafting the flyers to promote poetry readings and other events.
Pre-Order HERE

Book Launch - Alena Bruzas in conversation with Allison Bitz - The Broken Edge of the World
2026-07-18 16:30 - 17:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Francie & Finch Bookshop is pleased to host the celebratation of the launch of Alena Bruzas 3rd novel, The Broken Edge of the World! Come hear her in conversation with cherished local author Allison Bitz! We can’t wait to see you there!
Pre-order your copy of The Broken Edge of the World, here!
About the Book:
Their love is destined, but can it survive her compulsion for beauty? Haunting and steamy, this spellbinding fantasy romance will enthrall you with its alluring concoction of traditional Grimm’s and modern thrills.
“With deft, atmospheric prose and lush, otherworldly lore, Bruzas captures the essence of self-identity, belonging and the kind of love that both consumes and inspires. A dazzling modern fairytale.”
—Kika Hatzopoulou, bestselling author of Threads That Bind
Sylvie has taken a summer job at a remote and alluring prairie preserve in the middle of the Great Plains. It’s a much-needed escape—from her sadness, from her cruelly distant father, and maybe even from herself: She longs to be free of the intrusive, obsessive thoughts that are her constant burden.
Soon, she finds herself drawn to a stunning shepherd boy and can’t stop herself from going to him at night, even though she’s been warned to keep away. During the day, though, she begins to develop a friendship with another boy, a strange-looking and strangely gentle coworker named Jack . . . and gradually to uncover the mysteries of this place that feels more like home than anyplace has before it.
But those mysteries include a powerful curse, and when she uncovers the truth of it, she becomes recklessly determined to break it—to free the one trapped in its spell. She fails to consider the possibility that her actions could break much more than just the curse, and that some burdens demand to be borne.
About the Author:
Alena Bruzas grew up in Seattle and currently lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her family. She is the author of the acclaimed novels To the Bone and Ever Since, and she hopes her writing will find the people who need it most. When she’s not writing, Alena works at a bookstore and serves on the board for Ten Thousand Villages, Lincoln. She also occasionally cooks dinner, worries about commas, and wanders the prairie.
Praise for The Broken Edge of the World:
“This psychologically incisive supernatural novel by Bruzas blends the eerie cadence of dark fairy tales with modern suspense to probe themes of obsession. Sylvie’s unflinchingly self-critical yet deeply empathetic first-person narration captures both the claustrophobic logic of her OCD and the aching vulnerability of a girl desperate to be seen and loved. It all adds up to a sensitive, fully fleshed-out portrayal of one teen navigating grief alongside mental health challenges.”—Publishers Weekly
“Recommended, particularly for readers who enjoy retellings inspired by fairy tales.”—School Library Journal

Visiting Author - Colleen Morton Busch in conversation with Judy Lorenzen - Smolder
2026-08-07 16:30 - 17:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Join us as we welcome Ex Ophidia’s 2025 winner for the Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Prize, Colleen Morton Busch, as she presents her book of poetry Smolder. Colleen will be joined in conversation by writer Judy Lorenzen. We will see you there!
About the Book:
Smolder takes its title from a diagnosis my husband received 20 years ago, of smoldering multiple myeloma—a treatable but incurable blood cancer we’d never heard of before. At that time, the prescribed treatment was: Don’t do anything. Just watch and wait for myeloma to cause problems. Sometimes the title comes before the work. This lush word—smolder—plucked from the natural world and set down amid arid clinical terms and bewildering medical advice captivated me. I immediately wanted to write a collection of poems entitled Smolder. I did write some of the poems. But then I spent the next two decades working in prose. Eventually, I found my way back to poetry and its ability to relate a story and accrue meaning the way only a poem can. I had my title, Smolder, but now I had the embodied experience of twenty years to spark and sustain the poems. Smolder explores the many kinds of fire blazing inside a life. Fires of rage, grief, lust, loss, uncertainty and acceptance. They’re love poems, elegies, prayers, howls, meditations. Together, the poems reveal what it’s like to live with the open flame of a tender heart
About the Author:
Colleen Morton Busch is the 2025 winner of the Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Prize, an annual poetry book contest by Ex Ophidia Press. Busch’s winning collection Smolder is a collection of poems about that many kinds of fire blazing inside life. Busch is the author of “Fire Monks: Zen Minds Meets Wildfire” (Penguin Press, 2011) that was named best book of the year by Publisher’s Weekly. Her prose and poems have been published widely, from Willow Springs, Poet Lore, and Belleview Literary Review, to Orion, The Washington Post, Tricycle, and the Ekphrastic Review. Smolder is her first poetry collection
For more about her work, visit www.colleenmortonbusch.com
About Guest:
Judy Lorenzen, a former children’s librarian and English teacher, is a poet, writer and teaching artist, who lives on a farm in Central City, where she enjoys the vast beauty of the Great Plains every day of her life. Her works appear in journals, anthologies, newspapers, magazines, and on calendars and websites. Her first book, Turning Back to Her Love Pages, was published in May 2025, Kelsay Books. Her second book, Seasons of Reverence, a poetic memoir of her life on the Great Plains, released June 2026.

Meet Nebraska Historian Ed Zimmer - Nebraska Telephone Company History and Beyond
2026-08-08 16:30 - 17:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Francie & Finch Bookshop is celebrating 10 years in the historic Telephone Building! Join us on August 8th as beloved local historian and author Ed Zimmer takes us on an in-depth journey through the history of our home, the LincolnTelephone Building and the Nebraska Telephone Company!
Following the talk, Ed’s publications, including all 3 volumes of Walking the Near South, will be available for purchase and signing! We can’t wait to see you there!
About the Speaker:
Ed Zimmer is a native of Omaha. He spent over a decade studying and working in Boston, earning a Ph.D. in architectural history from Boston University in 1984. While in Massachusetts he freelanced as a researcher and writer for clients including Harvard’s Peabody Museum, the National Park Service, and Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Ed served as Lincoln’s historic preservation planner for 35 years, retiring in 2020. From 1996 until 2015, he was also an elected member of the LPS Board of Education. Ed and his wife Pat walk several miles daily, enjoying Lincoln’s trails, parks, and neighborhoods, while continuing to learn about and share our community’s histor

Book Launch - David Moscovich - Premieres: A Memoir in Verse
2026-08-10 17:30 - 18:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Francie and Finch Bookshop is pleased to welcome back author David Moscovich! Join us as we celebrate Premieres: A Memoir in Verse!
Books available for purchase at the event with author signing to follow talk.
About the Author: David Moscovich (it/its) is the Romanian-American author of four novels and two books of poetry: You Are Make Very Important Bathtime (JEF Books, 2013), LIFE+70[Redacted](Lit Fest Press, 2016), Blink if You Love Me (Adelaide, 2019), and Manhattan Other (Adelaide, 2023). Workday [CAPTCHA Poems] is now available from BlazeVOX. Moscovich runs Louffa Press, a small press publisher of chapbooks and artist books and triangulates between New York, Portugal and Nebraska.
About the Book:
“A uniquely touching meditation on the parental experience.”
—Ross Benes, author of Rural Rebellion
“In keeping track of daily life and history’s sharp turns through the indignities a baby inflicts on the parent or parents, David Moscovich finds a bright new way to tell a story. Never has the baby’s incapacity to recognize the needs of another been so humorously or so lovingly explored as in this book. Language itself emerges in Premieres as that impossible bridge that nonetheless bridges, that imperfect realization that nonetheless counts.”
—Leonard Schwartz, author of Flacofolio and Actualities
“From first smiles to first words, David Moscovich’s Premieres is a tender, funny and deeply observant memoir chronicling the first three years of his daughter’s life.”
—Mike Topp, author of Shorts Are Wrong

Book Launch - Matt Schur - Even This is Holy Ground: Poetry
2026-08-15 16:30 - 17:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Join us as we welcome back poet Matt Schur! He will be reading from his new book of poetry Even This is Holy Ground. Read more about it below!
To order your copy of his new book, follow the link HERE:
About the Book:
Even This Is Holy Ground is a poetry collection rooted in Christian faith and unafraid of the world as it actually is.
With clarity and conviction, these poems confront Christian nationalism, cheap grace, and the harm done in God’s name. They refuse easy explanations for suffering. They push back against platitudes. They name grief—personal and collective—without looking away. And yet, resurrection remains. Not as sentiment or denial, but as costly, embodied hope.
This collection is for readers who love the church and wrestle with it. For those who believe and doubt in the same breath. For those who are weary of certainty but unwilling to surrender hope. For anyone searching for a faith spacious enough for lament, fierce enough for truth, and grounded enough to call even this—especially this—holy.
About the Author:
Matt Schur hails from Lincoln, Nebraska. He holds a BA in English from Truman State University and an MA in Systematic Theology from Luther Seminary. Matt has preached in churches across Nebraska and currently serves two congregations as a Synodically Authorized Minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). When he’s not writing, preaching, or making music, Matt can often be found cheering on his beloved Huskers and Red Sox with his wife and kids. Even This Is Holy Ground is his third poetry collection.

Visiting Author - Marlene Zuk - Outsider Animals: How the Creatures at the Margins of Our Lives Have the Most to Teach Us
2026-08-18 17:30 - 18:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Join us as we welcome author and evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk to Francie & Finch Bookshop at 5:30 on August 18th to sign copies of her book Outsider Animals: How the Creatures at the Margins of Our Lives Have the Most to Teach Us! Marlene will be visiting Lincoln as the keynote speaker for the annual Arthropodium 2026 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln!
To learn more about this seperate event visit https://caremi.unl.edu/events-news/upcoming-events/
(About Arthropodium 2026:
The signature annual gathering of the University of Nebraska’s Community for Arthropod Research, Education, and Materials Innovation (CAREMI), a growing interdisciplinary initiative that brings together researchers, educators, engineers, artists, and students to explore how arthropods—such as insects, spiders, and crustaceans—can inspire new approaches to challenges in health, sustainability, materials science, robotics, and public engagement with science. The 2026 Arthropodium will highlight the growing national visibility of arthropodinspired innovation with internationally recognized leaders in science, art, and culinary innovation.)
To order a copy of Marlene’s book from F&F, follow the link HERE!
About the Book:
“This is a truly compelling book, rich with scientific expertise and humor.”–Isabella Rossellini
From one of our foremost experts on behavioral evolution, an entertaining exploration of what raccoons, rats, and other animal intruders teach us about intelligence, adaptability, and ourselves
When we think of animals that provide the greatest insights into animal cognition and behavior, primates and honeybees come to mind, or perhaps whales or octopus. What about the raccoons that plunder our rubbish at night, or the coyotes that threaten pets and livestock, or the gulls that divebomb for snacks at the beach? Outsider Animals challenges everything you thought you knew about the overlooked animals that live in proximity to humans, sharing the stories that each has to tell about adaptation and cohabitation on our increasingly crowded planet.
Marlene Zuk gives us a new appreciation for the animals we often shun, explaining why these unpopular creatures have something special to teach us not only about the ways we deal with other species but about our own place in nature and what it means for an animal to belong somewhere. You will discover how coyotes and snakes shed light on our coevolution with predators, what cockroaches tell us about the evolution of pregnancy, how butterflies make us reconsider the effects of roadside pollution, how cowbirds and mynas are forcing ecologists to think differently about invasive species, and much more.
Writing with an infectious blend of humor and curiosity, Zuk invites us to reflect on our relationships with these close-to-home creatures and the ways our lives encroach on theirs, and to draw lessons from their behavior in all its fascinating complexity.
About the Author:
Marlene Zuk is an evolutionary biologist and author of seven books – most recently, Outsider Animals – and ~200 scientific publications. Her research integrates behavior, physiology, and evolutionary theory to explore how signaling systems evolve under competing pressures from mates, predators, and pathogens. Her most recent book is a science-driven exploration of the animals that live alongside humans but are often disliked, ignored, or misunderstood.

Visiting Author - Alexandra Hayne - What Ruth Learned
2026-08-29 16:30 - 17:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
On Saturday, August 29th Francie & Finch will be welcoming Omaha author Alexandra Hayne as she presents her debut novel What Ruth Learned, a novel of “secrets, reinvention,and the stories we inherit”!
Call the shop to pre-order your copy today!
Abou the Book:
A novel of secrets, reinvention, and the stories we inherit
Ruth Sullivan never expected to return to Los Angeles. But when her life stalls out, she is pulled back to her hometown — and into the mystery of her family’s past. What begins as a quest to remake her own life becomes a journey through forgotten journals, faded photographs, and the shadows of 1950s Hollywood.
In a dual-timeline narrative that spans decades, Ruth uncovers the truth about a woman who called herself C-Note, a priest with a past, and a marriage that unraveled under the weight of ambition and silence. As Ruth pieces together the fragments of lives she never knew, she must confront her own choices, her fractured family, and the legacy she is poised to carry forward.
What Ruth learns does change her life, but not in the way she first imagined.
About the Author:
Alexandra Hayne was born and raised in Los Angeles in a movie industry family. She graduated from Van Nuys High School at sixteen, left home, and promptly flunked out of UCLA. A year later, a little older and maybe a little wiser, she returned to college, eventually earning a bachelor’s degree in English from California State University Northridge and a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. An award-winning journalist, she worked for thirty-five years as a reporter and editor in print and online news media in California and Iowa, and, in Nebraska, at the Lincoln Journal Star and the Omaha World-Herald, where she was the founding editor of Omaha.com. She is the mother of three and grandmother of four. When she is not writing, reading, or spending time with friends and family, she can often be found listening to live blues at one of the many fine dive bars in Omaha, Nebraska, where she lives. WHAT RUTH LEARNED is her first novel.

Visiting Author - Van Jensen - Godfall
2026-09-03 17:30 - 18:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Join us as we welcome back to Francie & Finch Bookshop author Van Jensen! We will be celebrating the hardcover publication of his novel Godfall, and will be hearing about the sequal, Godrise, set to release in January 2027!
To order the hardcover of Godfall, follow the link HERE!
To pre-order a copy of Godrise, give us a call at 402-781-0459!
About Book 1 – Godfall:
In this riveting contemporary thriller, Sheriff David Blunt is faced with a string of murders following the arrival of a mystery from out space—soon to be a television series from Ron Howard!
“A fully engrossing, genre-bending procedural that will have you staying up long past your bedtime.” -Karin Slaughter, New York Times and #1 international bestselling author of Pretty Girls
All David Blunt wanted was to be sheriff of his hometown, Little Springs, Nebraska, population 731. But his days of simply keeping the peace among the locals he’s known all his life are upended by a series of brutal, bizarre murders—all happening in the wake of an event truly out of this world. One year ago, just outside the town, a being fell to Earth. Whatever it is, it’s three miles tall, seemingly dead, and definitely not human.
Dubbed “the giant,” the being’s arrival has transformed this quaint farm town from the middle of nowhere into the most important city on the planet. Yes, a city, complete with a top-secret government research site and a hundred thousand new residents: soldiers, scientists, bureaucrats, spies, criminals, conspiracy theorists—and now a murderer.
David never thought his job would involve breaking up chanting crowds of cultists or brokering peace with dueling government agencies, all against the backdrop of the otherworldly. And as he faces a murder spree that strikes closer and closer to home, David has to solve multiple mysteries—what fell from the sky, how it’s connected to the killings right in front of him, and who the killer is—before he loses his hometown forever.
About Book 2 – Godrise: (Release date, January 26th, 2027)
In the shadow of the giant—the three‑mile‑tall alien that dropped down, seemingly dead, just outside of town—Little Springs continues to grow: 200,000 people and still expanding rapidly. Crisis looms as they come to realize there is not enough water for all of them. A tech industry titan decides to dam a river and pipe its water into the city, which sparks off a quickly growing protest. The dam is to be built on the historic site of a Lakota massacre at the hands of the U.S. army. Sheriff David Blunt is tasked with mediating the conflict, an assignment that becomes impossible when a protester turns up dead—murdered, David believes.
Meanwhile, scientist Sunny Lee is on the verge of a breakthrough to understanding the truth of the giant. Except, to unlock its mysteries, she’ll have to venture into the giant itself and risk touching off a cataclysm. All the while, worrying omens appear, indicating that the blade stabbed through the giant is spreading its infection—an alien life form with its own dark agenda.

About the Author:
Van Jensen is an acclaimed novelist, screenwriter, and comic book writer. Godfall, his debut novel, is in development as a TV series with Academy Award winner Ron Howard attached to direct. Jensen began his career as a newspaper crime reporter, then broke into comic books and graphic novels as the writer of ARCA (IDW), Two Dead (Gallery 13), and Tear Us Apart (Dark Horse). Jensen has written world-renowned characters, including Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Godzilla, and James Bond. He has served as a Comic Book Ambassador for the U.S. State Department, teaching refugee children to tell their stories through comics. He lives in Atlanta.

Panel Discussion - The Lives of Immigrants and Refugees: Tales of Migration, Hope, Grief, and Finding Home in Nebraska
2026-09-16 17:30 - 18:30 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Join us on Wednesday September 16th at 5:30 as we hear stories from the new book from University of Nebraska Press, The Lives of Immigrants and Refugees: Tales of Migration, Hope, Grief, and Finding Home in Nebraska. We can’t wait to see you there!
To pre-order your copy, follow the link HERE!

About the Book:
Human beings have always migrated. To be on the move, searching for a more hospitable climate, greater resources, and a welcoming community, is part of our human DNA. All kinds of large, uncontrollable forces—war, the threat of genocide, climatic changes, political exile, and economic hardship—propel people to leave behind everything familiar and begin their lives over again in a strange place, sometimes with only the clothes on their backs.
The Lives of Immigrants and Refugees offers thirty-one essays by immigrants and refugees who now call Lincoln, Nebraska, home. These individuals have found support, belonging, and opportunity through the collaborative work of Lincoln’s New Americans Task Force members and the Lincoln/Lancaster County Welcoming and Belonging Strategic Plan. The stories in this book are brilliant, harrowing, poetic, and revelatory. They’re also stories of survival, resilience, creativity, and a staggering amount of work: learning a new language, navigating a challenging immigration system, being perceived as a foreigner, struggling to grasp strange new customs and traditions, working one’s way out of extreme poverty, working through trauma and grief. Those of us who have had the good fortune of not being displaced have much to learn by listening.
About the Editors:
Leirion Gaylor Baird is the mayor of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Matthew F. Bokovoy is a senior acquisitions editor at the University of Nebraska Press, specializing in Native American and Indigenous studies, general nonfiction of the American West, and borderlands history. His articles have appeared in the Journal of the American Planning Association, New Mexico Historical Review, and Reviews in American History. He is the author of The San Diego World’s Fairs and Southwestern Memory, 1880–1940.
Lisa Guill is communications director at the Asian Community and Cultural Center. She is also the Welcoming Communities coordinator at Cultural Centers of Lincoln.
Michelle Carr Hassler is associate professor emerita of journalism at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She was a newspaper reporter for sixteen years in Colorado, Arizona, and Nebraska. Hassler has received nine national teaching awards, most from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication-refereed competitions and her students have won national and regional awards, including the 2023 Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Digital Reporting. She was executive director of the Nebraska High School Press Association and received the R. Neale Copple Friend of Journalism Award in 2019.
Joy Castro is Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies and director of the Institute of Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She is the author of the memoir The Truth Book (Nebraska, 2012), the essay collection Island of Bones (Nebraska, 2012), the fiction collection How Winter Began (Nebraska, 2015), and the literary thrillers Hell or High Water, Nearer Home, Flight Risk, and One Brilliant Flame. She edited Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family (Nebraska, 2013), and serves as the founding editor of Machete, a series in innovative creative nonfiction by underrepresented voices at Ohio State University Press.
Emira Ibrahimpašić is associate professor of practice in School of Global Integrative Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies at University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Her research articles have appeared in Translocal: Contemporary Local and Urban Cultures Journal, Island Studies Journal, and CAPA: The Global Education Network Academic Publications.
Praise for the Book:
“This important collection brings together academics and the Lincoln community to tell about how communities thrive as a result of immigration and change. These stories will make you cry and swell with compassion as you read the harrowing stories of trauma, resilience, and triumph directly from the pens of those who have lived through these adventures. These are American stories that reflect the bedrock notion that the United States, Nebraska, and Lincoln in particular have always been places that embrace immigrants from all over the world who come seeking a home to start a new life and become part of our community.”—María E. Montoya, coauthor of Global Americans: A History of the United States
“This important work chronicles how Lincoln, Nebraska’s, residents have created a welcoming haven for the world’s tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe freely. Recounting in first-hand narratives their past victimization, these women and men simultaneously celebrate how Lincoln has incorporated them into the body politic. In this moment of harrowing national peril, here is a powerful paradigm for welcoming strangers.”—Ramón A. Gutiérrez, author of New Mexico’s Moses: Reies López Tijerina and the Religious Origins of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement
“This book is a remarkable creative accomplishment. Beyond the sheer poignancy and power of the individual stories, The Lives of Immigrants and Refugees is a testament to the ways in which municipal policy can and should intersect with public-facing scholarly work. Lincoln, Nebraska, can take a big measure of pride in the publication of this book for the ways it honors not only its immigrant and refugee neighbors but also the work of welcoming, supporting, and learning from them all.”—William Deverell, professor of history and codirector of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West

Book Launch - Luis Othoniel Rosa - El Gato En El Remolino/Animal Spiral
2026-09-18 17:00 - 18:00 | Francie & Finch Bookshop, 130 S. 13th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68508, United States
Join us for a book launch you don’t want to miss! On September 18th author Luis Othoniel Rosa will be presenting his book El Gato En El Remolino, and the English language version, translated by Katie Marya, Animal Spiral.
To order the Spanish language version, El Gato En El Remolino, follow the link HERE!
To order the English language version, Animal Spiral, follow the link HERE!
About the Book:
The post-colonial birth, life, and death of the collective consciousness known as the Animal.
Middle-aged streamer twins in Bayam n, Puerto Rico, are the first human beings to successfully connect–sharing their consciousness across 34 translucent cables. In that moment, the Animal is born, an intracerebral force that quickly grows to encompass anthills of synaptically entwined bodies, a floating library kitchen redolent of rice and beans far above the Mississippi river, and a transhuman compound in a future Cuba on the Isle of Youth.
Circling back and forth and ever progressing, Animal Spiral moves through 400 years of human, and then post-human history, beginning with a revolution on the streets of San Juan and ending with five brilliant siblings: the Squash (humanoid), Calima (beetles), Yemay (eels), Coatlicue (serpents), and Jurac n (anthropomorphic birds), who have millions of bodies and all the world’s intelligence, but only want to no longer be alone. This is a buoyant, joyous ode to possibility, a warning about the dangers of neglecting what makes us human, and an astonishing exercise of the flexibility and capacity of liminal spaces. Loneliness is a collective disease We defend our right to madness Brave are not the ones who resist; brave are the ones who let go.
About the Author:
Luis Othoniel Rosa is a Puerto Rican writer from Bayamón. He studied at the University of Puerto Rico and holds a PhD from Princeton University, and his work engages with questions of literature, politics and form.Katie Marya is the author of Sugar Work, the Editor’s Choice for the 2020 Alice James Book Award, and the translator of Luis Othoniel Rosa’s novel Animal Spiral (2026). She has been awarded the James Dickey Prize in Poetry from Five Points and support from the Nebraska Arts Council and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Murray State University.
About the Translator:
Katie Marya is the author of Sugar Work, the Editor’s Choice for 2020 Alice James Book Award. Her poetry, creative nonfiction, and translations have appeared in literary magazines such as AGNI, North American Review, Waxwing, Salamander, Fence, and on the national poetry podcast The Slowdown Show. She lives in Nebraska and teaches writing a the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
