NORFOLK – On Wednesday, the final Visiting Writers Series event was held at Hawk’s Landing here on campus. Bonnie Johnson-Bartee puts on this event every year. Around 25 people were present at the third Visiting Writers. The poets were Cat Dixon and Emily Borgmann.

Cat Dixon was born in Hawaii on an Air Force base and moved to Nebraska with her parents at 5-years-old. She has always wanted to be a writer. Dixon has been writing fiction since fifth grade but found her love for poetry in high school. While attending the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Dixon often was noticed in her poetry class. “A professor at UNO gave me an A+ in my first poetry class, and he kept using my poems as examples, so I got kind of a big head and I stuck with poetry,” Dixon said.

Dixon’s newest book is called, “The Rest of Her Days.” In this book, Dixon writes about her experience as a mother and her childhood. “It’s a collection of poems about motherhood, the mother-daughter bond and also trying to part some wisdom onto my daughter but also to whoever reads the collections.”

Dixon has also experimented with writing personas.  The two main characters she writes for her personas are Eva Braun,  Adolf Hitler’s wife, and Bob Levinson. “Bob Levinson is an American that has been missing for 12 years. He went to Iran and never came back,” Dixon explained.

Emily Borgmann grew up in Hoskins and later moved to Omaha to carry on her passion in writing. Past instructor Neil Harrison, here at Northeast Community College recommended that she get a degree at UNO, which she later obtained. Borgmann began writing at a young age and has been writing ever since. “It got me through tough stuff because I got to write down what was happening. I was just journaling without knowing, I didn’t have any poetry instruction until I took my first creative writing classes here at Northeast,” Borgmann said.

Through her writing she is, “trying to figure out what the truth was and what the truth is, especially as a child,” Borgmann said. Borgmann writes about different things that most writers avoid. “I write about big topics that you are not really supposed to write about. Love, God, family relationships and trauma,” Borgmann said. During the reading her works showed exactly that. “I wrote a piece about my mom when she had an amputation and we were trying to resolve our relationship. It was hard to write, but it helped me,” Borgmann said. Borgmann’s favorite poet, Adrian Rich, inspires her to write about these deep topics. “She writes like she is not afraid and she has this quote ‘the moment of change is the real poem’ and I was in awe when I heard that,” Borgmann said.

The students that were present at the reading said that they were interested in learning more about different writers and how they use their personal experiences to become better writers. “I like attending readings like this because they give me the motivation to keep writing even though it’s a challenge,” Jacqueline Torija, an English major, said. “It also helps me realize that I have to let go of my fear of getting criticized if I want to get anything I ever write published.”

More of Visitor Writing Series will be held in the College Welcome Center in the spring. The event won’t be in Hawk’s Landing due to construction. Watch The Viewpoint’s facebook page to find out the times.