Dear Great Plains is a postcard-writing campaign created by 2023-24 Student Storyteller in Residence Karla Hernandez Torrijos. The project hopes to tell a different story of the Great Plains: more complex, more diverse, and more nuanced. Karla facilitated public workshops and approached groups and individuals to gather letters to the Great Plains, encouraging people to use the space to reflect on lived experiences in the region: positive, negative, and everything in between.
"A collective letter, the project raises questions of heritage, history, and home. Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “Knowing that you love the earth changes you [...] but when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.” I am asking you to consider your bond with the Great Plains. I am asking you to write a postcard to the Great Plains. There is no right or wrong way to make your postcard: paint it your favorite shade of yellow, write a grocery list for your grandmother’s chocolate-chip cookies, chronicle the worst snow day of your life. We are interested in the story of the Great Plains, as told by the people who live here." --Karla Hernandez Torrijos
The postcards became an art installation open to the public at the Great Plains Art Museum in November 2024.
Karla Hernandez Torrijos
Karla Hernandez Torrijos (she/her) is a poet and workshop facilitator who has been invited to read in venues across Nebraska, including The Bay, El Museo Latino, and The UNL Wick Alumni Center. The recipient of the 2022-2023 Irby F. Wood Prize for Poetry and the 2020-2021 Vreeland Award for Poetry, her writing interrogates our understanding of home, displacement, and the liminal space in between. Karla was the 2021-2022 Creative in Community Resident for The LUX Center for the Arts and is the inaugural Student Storyteller in Residence for The Center for Great Plains Studies. Her work can be found in Preposition: An Undercurrent Anthology.
Postcard designs
Postcards illustrated by Katie Nieland, Associate Director for the Center for Great Plains Studies.
Postcards
