On January 14, there was an open mic night in Little Rock hosted at River City Coffee by UCA creative writing graduate student Annika Warrick. 

Anyone could perform a poem or song of their choice for the audience, or just walk in for a cup of coffee and enjoy the performances.

Annika used to only sign up to perform her poems, however when Annika’s friend Skylar got busy, open mic went on hiatus for a while.

“My friend Skylar, who was the feature for tonight, actually used to host our monthly open mic here at River City. Skylar also does drag and got really busy with performing and we went, like maybe 2 months without performing. I was like man, I really miss it, I wonder who’s gonna pick it back up and it was me…”

Annika was nervous at first about being MC, but as time went on, she became more comfortable.

“I actually teach 2 sections of intro to creative writing as a part of my graduate teaching program, and I’m in the process of applying for PhD programs and it’ll look really good. I also just want to feel more comfortable doing stuff like this because that’s what my job as a professor is, standing in front of a classroom being able to facilitate and create a space to foster vulnerability and care for one another in my community. I also wanted to give back to my community…”

Alumni student, Corbin, class of 2017 also performed a song Tuesday night at River City.

“I knew that River City does hold shows, but I just knew of it as an open mic. It was a good opportunity to get on stage and start playing…”

Corbin majored in finance during his time at UCA however he had been into music his whole life.

“I’ve been into music my whole life really, but I started playing guitar when I was 15”

River City Open Mic is on the 2nd Tuesday of every month on 2913 Kavanaugh Blvd, Little Rock, Arkansas at 6p.m. For more information, go to @rivercityopenmic on Instagram.