July 6 at 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Free
On Sunday, July 6, 2025, at 2:00pm, the Betty Strong Encounter Center welcomes Nancy Lael Braun who will share “Heading Out: A Walk in Poetry.” No admission charge, but freewill donations encouraged.
Braun says that the idea of heading out can apply to a walk in the physical world or a journey of spiritual introspection and discovery or an act of uprooting one’s life to pursue a new direction.
She will be reading poetry from three collections: The poems of Heading Out spring from the simple activity of walking, which the poet says, “has saved her and formed her and given her gifts beyond measure.” The unsentimental poetry in her second collection A Puddle as Big as the Yard was inspired by watching a child grow and the experience of being a grandparent. The third poems in Fasting Slowly reflect a self-examination sparked by the spiritual practice of fasting with honesty, questioning, and humor.
Braun is a life-long Midwesterner, currently splitting her time between Lone Tree, Iowa, and Sioux City, Iowa. Her poems have appeared in Aquifer: Florida Review Online, Barbaric Yawp, Big Muddy, Briar Cliff Review, Iowa City: Poetry in Public, Passager, Pasque Petals, Persimmon Tree, and TSR: The Southampton Review.
