Words by Women is an annual interdisciplinary lecture series that brings in women
scholars, writers, performers, and community activists from across the country and
across the disciplines. This event is hosted in the fall and is free and open to the public.
Beginning in 1981, this annual event is a chance for writers and audience members
to interact and engage in converation. This is an inspiring and instructive experience
for writers, writing students, and connoisseurs of good writing. More than 100 women
writers have enriched the lives of Wichita audiences, including poets, playwrights,
authors of fiction and nonfiction, and features a mix of national, regional, and local
authors.
Since restarting the series in 2023, WEIS has leaned into its interdisciplinary scope
choosing scholars, writers, and authors from among the varied works in the humanities
and social sciences.
Words By Women 2025
In Fall 2025, WEIS celebrates its new partnership with the Department of English through
an additional Midwestern women-focused Writing Now, Reading Now series.
All readings are at Wichita State’s Ulrich Museum and are free and open to the public.
Watermark Books & Café will be present to sell authors' books for signing.
Fiction Reading by Karen Lee Boren
Tuesday, September 23, Reception at 5:30 pm /Reading at 6
Karen Lee Boren is the author of four works of fiction, many of which are set in Wisconsin.
Her newest, Ways Home: Stories, will be published September 9. Her novel Secret Waltz
(Flexible Press) appeared in 2022, and her 2006 novella, Girls in Peril, was the premier
publication for the Tin House New Voices series and a Barnes and Noble Discover selection.
Her story collection, Mother Tongue was published by New Rivers Press in 2015. She
has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is the winner of the 2018 Wundor Editions
Fiction Prize. Her writing has appeared in many venues, including The Florida Review,
Epoch, Cream City Review, and The American Journal of Poetry. She received an MFA
from Wichita State in 1994 and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin. She teaches
at Rhode Island College.
Poetry Reading by Traci Brimhall
Tuesday, October 7, Reception at 5:30 pm/Reading at 6
Traci Brimhall is the Poet Laureate of Kansas and the author of five poetry collections.
Her latest, Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon Press 2024), grieves a divorce and a new
diagnosis. In these poems, cycles of loss, heartbreak, family trauma, and chronic
illness appear. When the body becomes a site the poet “cannot live in or leave,” she
reaches for the slow, messy, and imperfect process of healing. Told through various
forms—aubades, a crown of prose sonnets, and admissions essay—Love Prodigal says yes
to second (and third and fourth)
chances, knowing that the heart gets bigger every time it heals. Traci Brimhall received
an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a PhD from Michigan State University. Her poems
have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Believer, Slate, The New Republi,c and
Best American Poetry. She teaches at Kansas State.
Fiction Reading by Christie Hodgen
Tuesday, November 11, Reception at 5:30 pm /Reading at 6
Christie Hodgen is the author of four books of fiction—A Jeweler’s Eye for Flaw (UMASS,
2003), Hello, I Must Be Going (W.W. Norton, 2006), Elegies for the Brokenhearted (W.W.
Norton, 2010) and Boy Meets Girl (New Issues Press, 2022). Her short fiction and essays
have appeared in dozens of magazines. Her awards include a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts, the AWP Prize in Short Fiction, the AWP Prize for the Novel,
and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She teaches at the University of
Missouri-Kansas City and is the editor-in-chief of New Letters.
Dr. Breanne Fahs, professor of women’s and gender studies at Arizona State University,
lectures on “Hairy Subjects: Resistance and Revolution in Women’s Body Hair Politics.”
Dr. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, a historian of Black women in the United States, gives lecture, “Julia Chinn: A
Story of Sex, Slavery, and Survival in the Old South”. The lecture is based on her
book, “The Vice-President’s Black Wife: The Untold Story of Julia Chinn.” Chinn, whose
story is mostly unknown, was the Black wife of the ninth vice president of the United
States and serves as an example of the intersectionality of race and gender in the
19th century United States.
