Nebraska has a rich literary history. Some of America’s most celebrated writers have called the Cornhusker state home. This film celebrates some of those writers, showing the land they loved with some of the lines they wrote. Dwight Marsh is Professor emeritus of English, Hastings College where he taught Plains literature and Nebraska literature courses. “Nebraska literature falls into about five categories, ” he says. “The first theme is the frontier story of the pioneers. So many of these adventures are detailed in Nebraska literature that one of our state logos is always the covered wagon with the oxen pulling it. The second major theme is that of the progressive political movement. We often find it embedded in our literature with a little bit of shame-faced awareness because of the tainted name of William Jennings Bryan who of was the leader of the great plains progressive movement in the latter part of the 19th century. The third theme is the great plains catastrophe. Which is when the drought and the depression coincided at the same time from 1929 on through basically 1937. That time changed the political spectrum of Nebraska from varied to singular because only the bankers and the land owners were going to end up with (money). A fourth theme crops up and (it) is a rather frightening one. The Charlie Starkweather escapade form the late 1950s. The fifth theme is native American materials where Native Americans have a literature of their own and it’s a little harder to access because it falls largely outside our literary conventions.”