Poetry @ the Public

We're welcoming Kalina and Heather to the Poetry @ the Public family!

Join us for an afternoon of light refreshments, community, and poetry. Kalina Smith and Heather Hummel will be making their Poetry @ the Public debut!

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Doors will open at 2:00 pm and guests are invited to enjoy light refreshments and a meet-and-greet with the authors. Readings will start at 2:30 pm.

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About the authors:

Kalina Smith, from Jonesboro, Arkansas, is mostly a poet, though she also writes fiction and creative nonfiction. She teaches high school English, oral communication, and creative writing, where she spends her days nurturing young storytellers and navigating the emotional labor of the classroom. She is also a member of the Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas.

Kalina earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas-Monticello and during the Spring of 2025, served as the poetry editor for Shadowplay, the school’s literary magazine.

Among her publications are a recently released chapbook titled Scorpio Season and poems in Nebo, The Ignatian, FLARE: The Flagler Review, ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry, Tulsa Review, and SLANT, UCA’s international journal of contemporary poetry.

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Heather Hummel is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the William G. Cooper, Jr. Honors Program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. In addition, she serves as faculty advisor of Equinox, a national literary journal of undergraduate student writing at UALR.

A native of California, Heather earned a B.A. in English from the University of California, Davis and later an M.A. in English Literature from Eastern Washington University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry from the  University of Southern Maine.

She is the author of the poetry collection Lessons in Breathing Underwater (Sundress Publications, 2020) and co-author of Short-Form Creative Writing: A Writers Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).  

In 2006, Heather co-founded Blood Orange Review, which is now part of the Washington State University editing and publishing program.

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This event is free and open to the public.

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