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Kyle Carsten Wyatt

Biography

Kyle Wyatt visited a high school in Central City, Nebraska, and asked students if they had read any works by Wright Morris. Not only had no one read him, no one had even heard of him, though he had been born in Central City and raised in towns across much of Nebraska. Such experiences fueled Kyle's passion for promoting the literary and oral traditions of the Great Plains to its own residents and beyond.

Kyle grew up on a dairy farm that his family had to auction off during the farm crisis of the 1980s. It is his first memory of heartache. It is a story he cannot forget, anymore than he can ignore the fact that his early education gave him only "half of the struggles and half of the glory" of a region filled with stories. Following graduation with a 4.0 GPA and his Phi Beta Kappa election at the University of Nebraska, Kyle became a valued research assistant to author-professor Joseph Starita. Professor Starita was impressed with Kyle's skill and drive, his "almost undiluted joy in discovering the dots and then seeing how they all connect." Kyle chose the University of Toronto for his graduate study in part because of its extensive historical and literary collections of both Canadian and Plains literature.

During his undergraduate years, Kyle was a star runner, competing for the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the USATF junior national track and field team, and an active member of the university's elite Society of Innocents. He also worked as an admissions counselor for the University of Nebraska, recruiting students from the massive campuses of Minneapolis-St. Paul and the sometimes inadequately funded schools of rural Nebraska. This experience confirmed Kyle in his goal to become not only a scholar of the Great Plains, but also to teach at a public university, engaging those students whom many other schools might not have selected.

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