Blog Archives

MEMBER WORK in MacQueen's Quinterly

7/28/2020

The June issue of MacQueen's Quinterly has three works by Robert L. Dean Jr., D5, one of which earned Clare's "Editor's Choice Award" for this issue.

The ekphrastic poem which got the Editor's Choice Award is talked about in the contents entry titled "Editor's Choice Award." The title is "Hands," is written to a photo taken by an Oklahoma photographer named Gay Pasley. "Hand's" is also mentioned in the "Ekphrastic Works" section, as is Dean's other ekphrastic piece in this issue, "Newsboy." The third poem, "The Bus to Elysium," is listed under Prose Poems. Here's the link to Contents:

MacQueen’s Quinterly: Contents: Issue 4

The Big Quiet, by Lisa D. Stewart, D2 member

7/26/2020

Welcome Lisa D. Stewart, D2, to Kansas Authors Club.

Lisa's book, The Big Quiet: One Woman's Horseback Ride Home (Meadowlark Books) is now available wherever you buy books.

At 54, Lisa Stewart set out to regain the fearless girl she once had been, riding her horse, Chief, 500 miles home. Hot, homeless, and horseback, she snapped back into every original cell. On an extraordinary homegoing from Kansas City to Bates and Vernon Counties in Missouri, Lisa exhausted herself, faced her past, trusted strangers, and stayed in the middle of her frightened horse to document modern rural America, the people, animals, and land.

Publisher: Meadowlark (June 2020)
ISBN (print): 978-1-734-2477-4-9
Retail: $19.99
Pages: 308

Lisa D. Stewart is a commercial writer in Prairie Village, Kansas, who specializes in feasibility and marketing studies, business plans, grant proposals, magazine articles, and marketing content. Between 1984 and 1999, she and her former husband created and grew Ortho-Flex Saddle Company, after a 3,000-mile horseback trip that taught them about the relationship between saddles and the biomechanics of the horse. The couple produced and sold patented saddles and tack in more than 30 countries. She has published more than 100 articles on that topic of saddle fit. Lisa lives with her husband, Robert Stewart, editor emeritus of New Letters Magazine at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, and their dog, Paddy.

Advance Praise:
“Lisa Stewart’s The Big Quiet charts a path for all women. It’s a path at once dangerous and thrilling and a path she had started down and backed out of since childhood. The resulting narrative recounts a journey not only to a point on the map but to a whole and liberated self. Stewart is finally free to trust herself and others, to survive by her wits and with the help of kind strangers of which there are still many. This is a delicious fantasy of a journey most of us deny ourselves and one taken on the back of a horse whose simultaneously terrified and fiercely loyal personality unfurls before us as the richest of characters’ personalities do—on the way from Point A to Point B.”
-Kelly Barth, author of My Almost Certainly Real Imaginary Jesus

“This is a book of gratitude of the highest order. Stewart, a 54-year-old woman riding alone on a high-strung, sure-footed horse across the gravel grid of rural America, is grateful each night for a place to pitch a tent and pasture her horse. But her journey, past and present, is as much about the people she meets, many of whom know how to study a horse and to trust its rider—these strangers are glad to offer water and their own stories, which, like Stewarts’, churn with old wounds, hard work, family, and an abiding trust in open land. This compelling meditation reminds us that every step, fall, and missed road leads the rider home.”
-Gary Dop, author of Father, Child, Water, MFA Program Director at Randolph College

“This book is more than a log of an unusual (for this day and age) solitary horseback journey; it is also a perceptive examination of the author’s own life—a well-written introspective journey of self-discovery.”
-James F. Hoy, author of Flint Hills Cowboys: Tales of the Tallgrass Prairie, Chair of Emporia State University’s English Department and professor, past president of the Kansas Historical Society

“After riding more than 3,000 miles across the United States in the early 1980s, Stewart helped launch one of that country’s most successful saddle companies. Yet Lisa Stewart is no salesman, eager to sell a saddle to gain a commission. She is a long rider who made mistakes and learned by them. She faced obstacles and overcame them. She was presented with ancient riddles and discovered solutions.”
-CuChullaine O’Reilly, FRGS, Founding Member of The Long Riders’ Guild

District 6 invitation to Zoom meeting - Author Mark Simmons

7/24/2020

Author Mark Simmons will discuss his path to being published at Saturday's (July 25) virtual D6 Zoom meeting which starts at 1:30 p.m. Learn how to take your writing & ambition to the next level.

He will talk about motivation, stumbling blocks, hurdles, steps, and missteps, & especially the distractions that can interfere with success.

Learn about strategies, work plans, markets, & agents. Also, Q&A time. Author website is www.wmsimmons.com
The meeting is free & open to the public. For a meeting link, contact Jim Potter at [email protected] or 620-899-3144.

Member Book, Headwinds, makes 2020 Kansas Notable List

7/22/2020

Congratulations to D2 Member, Edna Bell-Pearson, and to Meadowlark Books, with for making the 2020 Kansas Notable Award list! Travel from Liberal to Marysville, Kansas, with the author in this post-World War II memoir.

July 15, 2020, Topeka, Kansas: State Librarian Eric Norris announced today the 15th annual selection of Kansas Notable Books. The fifteen books feature quality titles with wide public appeal, written either by a Kansan, set in Kansas, or about a Kansas related topic.

“I am proud to present the 2020 Kansas Notable Book list. This year’s list covers a wide swath of our cultural and natural history,” said Eric Norris, State Librarian. “The rich array of works on this year’s list examine petroglyphs across the prairie and go on fantastical high seas adventures with pirates; explore the careers of academics, athletes, and aviators; and consider the importance of family from the viewpoint of a young Exoduster in the 1880s and as a world traveler in a present day small western Kansas town. This year’s list will both educate and entertain. I encourage every Kansan to contact their local public library and celebrate the artists and artistry of Kansas.”

A committee of librarians, academics, and historians nominated titles from a list of eligible books, and state librarian Eric Norris selected the final list. In 2006, the first Kansas Notable Books list was announced. Since then more than 200 books have been recognized for their contribution to Kansas literary heritage.

Kansas Notable Books is a project of the Kansas Center for the Book. The Kansas Center for the Book is a program at the State Library of Kansas and the state affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book. The Kansas Center for the Book exists to highlight the state’s literary heritage and foster an interest in books, reading, and libraries.

River City Poetry - June 2020

7/22/2020

KAC D5 member, April Pameticky, has put together a powerful issue of River City Poetry that assembles Kansas Poets’ responses to the events of June 2020.
Members who have poems in this issue include Roy Beckemeyer, Dixie Brown, Arlice W. Davenport, H.B. Berlow, Robert L. Dean Jr., and Gretchen Eick.

all members invited to join the D5 virtual july meeting

7/2/2020

We've all been spending a lot more time at home these past few months. What have you been doing during that time? Choose one or two activities and write a SHORT bit of prose or poetry (2-3 minutes) to share with District 5 members at our July meeting, which will start promptly at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 11, on Zoom. Your writing prompt is "What I did on my 2020 Staycation."

It's easy to join us. Just download the free Zoom application (if you don't already have it) by going to zoom.us.

You who are members of districts other than D5 need to request the Zoom link from Connie White, President of D5, by e-mailing her at [email protected]. She will confirm your KAC membership and then send your invitation and the Zoom link.