Tucked in a cozy corner of the Bookworm bookstore, in the biography section where Sarah Palin’s vacant eyes gazed down on them all, four college students read fiction and poetry for the New Voices event.

The event was organized by the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Writer’s Workshop and Creighton’s Creative Writing Program. It featured two readers from each university, one reading poetry and one reading fiction.

A crowd of around 30 came to listen. UNO Senior Jessica Payne opened the event with an excerpt from her short story about a family coming to terms with the death of a sibling in a car accident.

Jill Bronk, Creighton Arts & Science senior, followed by reading various poems she had written in Ireland while studying creative writing abroad.

“I was a little nervous at first,” Bronk said. “But it was nice to actually get to read my poems for an audience because I’m just used to reading them to myself in my head. Overall I think it went great.”

Graduate Student, Ryan Borchers, who read a chapter from his novel “The Avengers,” followed her. The chapter followed two college freshmen trying to take the law into their own hands by means of tire slashing.

“I used to be in forensics in high school but actually reading something you wrote yourself and labored over is a bit harder,” Borchers said.

The evening came to a close with the poems of UNO student Stephanie Midwood whose poems put a poetic frame around 49th and Dodge.

“I really liked hearing everybody else’s stuff,” said Borchers leaning against an aisle of paperbacks after the event. “It’s nice to talk to the UNO kids and bounce ideas off of them. It’s good for both schools.”