Ken Waldman

Somehow it's 2026. How did that happen? So much has been going on this year that it's been hard to keep up. 

December, Ken spent several happy days in Marion IL, where at the invitation of the Marion Civic and Cultural Center, he was a roving fiddler for the city's holiday market, and played pop-up sets for a holiday movie marathon (and where he got to share his Jimmy Stewart poem and play Buffalo Gals before the showing of It's a Wonderful Life). Ken then drove north and west to spend the last three and a half weeks in rural New York Mills MN. There, he was a visiting artist at the New York Mills Cultural Center, mainly holed up writing, but he also played a show, led a workshop, and offered an impromptu program for seniors. It was fun, productive, frigid, snowy. 

November? Oregon to Colorado by road, then to North Carolina and back to Colorado by plane, and then back in the vehicle to visits/meetings in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. After a few gigs in southwest Pennsylvania, it was Thanksgiving Week in North Carolina.

After an early October gig in Salt Lake City to celebrate THE NOMAD litmag at Utah Humanities Book Festival with co-editor Rachel White, there were Oregon October events, including a milestone birthday show/book release at the White Eagle Saloon in Portland, followed by a quick trip to Louisiana to enjoy Blackpot Festival activities with friends. Before that, late September, Ken enjoyed a good, busy three days in schools in eastern Oregon's beautiful Wallowa Valley followed by a fourth day working with home-schoolers and then doing a public event at the iconic M. Crow. Prior to that, a conference in Milwaukee WI and visiting friends up and down the I-5 corridor. 

The second half of August Ken had two fine weeks of gigs between Fairbanks and Anchorage, where he also made sure his Now Entering Alaska Time novel was restocked and he played the Alaska State Fair with Anchorage pals. Earlier this summer Ken had festival hangouts in Washington state, West Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana (including seeing good friends Ken hadn't seen in years), a conference hangout also in North Carolina, meetings in Virginia, Ohio, Colorado and amazing hospitality from friends in Colorado, Missouri, West Virginia and North Carolina (where Ken even played an impromptu house concert and met a bass player who was in grad school in Fairbanks back when Ken was there in the 80's--wow to that). Mid July, Ken drove to near Cleveland, Ohio to pick up copies of his four new books (officially out in October), mailed copies to his Kickstarter supporters as well as to a few select reviewers, and even found time to scamper down to Spartanburg, South Carolina, vacate his storage unit, and move approximately 35 boxes to a Durham, North Carolina shed. 

May highlights included five days, with gig, in Clarksdale, Mississippi (see this video!), then twelve days in Austin where Ken shopped for, vetted, and bought a new used vehicle and made big progress on the four books he later picked up in July. April highlights? Gigs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Washington again, in that order--shows (some solo, some with accompanists) in arts centers, art galleries, libraries, clubs, plus eight school visits, plus various workshops, and there was a festival too. The busy month was how he paid for the van.

January-March was also really wonderfully full, mostly in Eastern Time Zone, but with a trip in Los Angeles and a big literary arts conference there.

What's next?

Big January doings in New York City (see this Thursday, January 8 event!, plus the night before he'll be in Brooklyn, and the night after will be a special conference showcase evening in Manhattan), Lafayette LA, and New Orleans, followed by even bigger doings in Oxford MS.

By the way, this page shows the kind of work Ken continues to provide. (And if you want the really deep dive into Ken's days, click this.) ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

His twelve CDs of old-time Appalachian-style string-band music include two for children.

His twenty-four books consist of seventeen full-length poetry collections, a memoir about his life as a touring artist,
three volumes of acrostic poems for kids, a short story collection, and a hybrid book that's part creative writing manual,
part memoir, part full-length collection of poems (about writers and writing). And there's also that novel.

A former college professor with an MFA in Creative Writing, he's been a visiting writer at over 100 colleges and universities,
a visiting artist at over 260 schools in 35 states, and has led workshops from Alaska to Maine.

As a performer, he's played from the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage to the Woodford Folk Festival (Queensland, Australia),
occasionally as a soloist, more often as leader of one of his ever-changing troupes of nationally recognized musicians.

Here's more about the music, the writing, the children's programs, and how they're all coming together under the broader
umbrella of Nomadic Productions.

Highlights? His essay in the Sept./Oct. 2015 issue of Poets & Writers magazine, an essay from a decade ago, continues to                                                                   feel current (acrostic poems from that piece are in some of the new 2025 collections).

2017-2021, Ridgeway Press of Roseville, Michigan published an eight-volume series of Ken's books. It's a special project.

Below, a pair of  8 1/2-minute video samplers featuring eight acts from his 2016 and 2017 Manhattan to Moose Pass roots
music variety shows, an evening he produces annually in conjunction with January's APAP conference in NYC. In the middle,
Ken Waldman with Willi Carlisle as part of a Ken Waldman & The Wild Ones show at Chico Performances in spring 2019
where Ken was joined by four other musicians. That Willi Cariisle--he's been going places. Check him out!