Category: Cheryl Unruh

2022 Convention: Curtis Becker Service Award

11/21/2022

Curtis Becker
Merit Award for Service to the Club
October 22, 2022

Nominated by Cheryl Unruh

The first time I heard the name Curtis Becker, it was in 2017 I believe, from Marcia Lawrence at her Ellen Plumb bookstore in Emporia. She mentioned that Curtis Becker was moving bookshelves for her, and had been doing other handy chores for her in her shop. Who is this Curtis Becker? I asked. Where did he come from? Marcia told me that he taught English at Northern Heights High School.

Eventually, I did meet this man of mystery when he joined the Emporia Writers Group. He shared his writing with us, poetry and short stories. He then published a book of his work, and he published books for other poets. He also takes charge of organizing a formal spring and fall reading for the group at the William Allen White Library.

I am nominating Curtis for this merit award for service for his dedicated and enthusiastic leadership in the Kansas Authors Club and in District 2.

Curtis has been a member of Kansas Authors Club since 2018. Curtis has served as State Newsletter Editor (2021-present), D2 Vice President (2021), and D2 Website Manager (2020-present). Curtis was one of the four-member team that made our 2020 Virtual Convention possible. He has volunteered each year since joining as a judge for our youth writing contests.

Curtis is currently serving as Chair of the Convention Planning Committee. We’ve had monthly zoom meetings and if he announces a 35-minute limit for a meeting, Curtis keeps the meeting at 35 minutes. How he accomplishes that is something of a mystery, but somehow everything gets covered and no one feels rushed. That’s good leadership.

Curtis has a good heart. He is friendly, has a great sense of humor, and makes a point to look for the positive side of things. And like those days he helped out at Emporia’s bookstore, he’s willing to jump in and help out at other writing events and gatherings - such as being the chief wrangler for this convention. Curtis Becker is a friend, a leader, a man of mystery, a man of many talents.

--Cheryl Unruh, D2 member (Emporia)

2022 Nelson Poetry Book Award Winner

11/10/2022

Nelson Poetry Book Award
Gravedigger’s Daughter
by Cheryl Unruh

Note from the Judge:
Cheryl Unruh’s Gravedigger’s Daughter stands as a testament to how great writing uses particulars to capture the universal. While few readers may have helped to prepare graves as a child or know what the summer sky looks like from their depths, Unruh’s beautifully crafted reflections unearth the relatable joys and confusions of youth, love, and loss. While each poem preserves a carefully honed memory, the collection as a whole carries the reader through a lifetime with touching humor and heartbreaking grace. It is an intimate look into a specific family, but it stirs familiar emotions that have the magic to conjure readers’ own pasts.

Dr. Julia Galm
2022 Nelson Poetry Book Judge

Dr. Julia Galm is a Communications instructor at Cloud County Community College, where she works with budding writers to help them hone their skills and voices. She has helped to revitalize CCCC’s creative and artistic journal, The Silver Lining, and she is a board member of the Brown Grand Opera House. Though a recent transplant to Kansas, she has fallen in love with the rolling grasslands of her new home.

Nelson Poetry Book Award Winners

Kristine Polansky, 2022 Vice President of Kansas Authors Club, presents Cheryl Unruh with the Nelson Poetry Award and the Martin Kansas History Book Award for Gravedigger's Daughter.

2022 Kansas Martin History Book Award

11/3/2022

Note from the Judge:
Cheryl Unruh’s Gravedigger’s Daughter is an insightful, generous-spirited book that creates a vivid sense of both place and time by telling the story of growing up in Pawnee Rock, a small town in Barton County during the 1960s and ‘70s. Unruh’s relationship with her father, an unassuming yet extraordinary man, is affectionately and unsentimentally rendered. The author’s understanding of the character of her father and hometown is delineated by an original writing style that is lean, colloquial, and understated while at the same time detailed, colorful, and intense; the language is both plain-spoken and elegant. The natural and cultural history of the place are woven into the narrative in fresh and surprising ways that enable the reader to experience multiple dimensions of Kansas history while following the ups and downs of the lives of the people featured in the story.

Ron Parks
2022 Martin Kansas History Judge

A fifth-generation Kansan, Ron Parks grew up in Minneapolis, Kansas, where he graduated from high school in 1967. Ron was executive director of the Kansas Eisenhower Centennial Commission from 1988 through October 1990. He also served for eight years as director of the Kaw Mission State Historic Site. Published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2014, his book, The Darkest Period: The Kanza Indians and Their Last Homeland, 1846-1873, won both the 2014 Prairie Heritage Book Award and the Santa Fe Trail Association’s Louis Barry Writing Award. The Darkest Period was selected as a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. Ron has also written numerous historical articles about Hays, Council Grove, and Minneapolis.

Kristine Polansky, 2022 Vice President of Kansas Authors Club, presents Cheryl Unruh with the Nelson Poetry Award for Gravedigger's Daughter.

Martin Kansas History Book Award Winners

D2 Members, Cheryl Unruh and Hazel Hart, present at Barton County Historical Society

4/4/2022

On Saturday, April 16, the Barton County Historical Society will host two Kansas authors who will discuss how the state figures into their literary works. At the 2 p.m. program, authors Cheryl Unruh and Hazel Hart will talk about how they incorporate Kansas into their writing, and each will read short segments from their books and do signings of their books for those who attend.

In her two essay books, Unruh has written about the Kansas experience, describing the skies and the landscape, the wind and weather, dirt roads and small towns. In her new memoir, “Gravedigger’s Daughter,” Unruh focused on stories about her father and her childhood in the small Barton County town of Pawnee Rock.

Hart will talk about her research on the “Pierce Family Saga,” a five-book series set in Kansas during the 19th century. She will discuss the differences in writing a story focused on the everyday lives of characters during a certain time period, and writing a story tied to specific historical events to make history come alive.

Book Review: Gravedigger's Daughter, by Cheryl Unruh

3/16/2022

Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town is Cheryl Unruh’s (D2) latest masterpiece, a memoir written in prose poetry that transported me to my childhood. I too, grew up with bottle caps, firecrackers, collecting stamps, and reading wanted posters at the P.O.
This memoir, dedicated to Cheryl’s father, Elgie Unruh of Pawnee Rock, is perfect. That means every word is precise.

The walls at Great Bend hospital aren’t white; they’re “vanilla hallways.” Family members at the hospital aren’t nervous. Instead, “a hospital waiting room ages you overnight,” and cooking over a campfire wasn’t just fun for Cheryl; “we tasted adventure in every bite.”

If you want adventure and delight without ever leaving your home tonight, read Gravedigger’s Daughter. It will improve your life.

--Jim Potter (D6), author of Taking Back the Bullet: Trajectories of Self-Discovery

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D2 Member, Cheryl Unruh, Book Launch Event in Emporia

11/9/2021

Emporia, KS--Flyover People essayist Cheryl Unruh, takes the stage for a literary celebration, complete with reading and book signing as Meadowlark Press releases Unruh’s new memoir, Gravedigger’s Daughter: Vignettes from a Small Kansas Town, at Lyon County History Center on Saturday, November 13 at 1:00pm.

An array of regional books will be available for purchase, including other titles by Unruh, as well as books published by Meadowlark Press.

Unruh’s memoir details a small-town childhood as the daughter of a carpenter-father, who also happens to be the town cemetery caretaker. As Cheryl grows, so does her comprehension of her father’s particular maladies, a skin-condition that is not discussed by the family, as well as his struggles with depression. Presented in short vignettes, Gravedigger’s Daughter introduces Unruh’s father from a child’s eye view, and then via observations and interactions that take us through Unruh’s adolescence to adulthood. Divided into three parts, the book covers Unruh’s childhood in Pawnee Rock, her father’s middle-age years when she lived away, and his later years.

Unruh grew up in the town of Pawnee Rock in central Kansas, population 400, in the 1960s and 70s. “The stories, or vignettes, are poem-shaped, but each captures a moment in time. I see each one as a snapshot,” Unruh says. “While I will never be able to relate the entirety and complexity of a life, I hope that some of my dad’s weird and wonderful personality shines through.”

From Laura Moriarty, author of The Chaperone: “With Gravedigger’s Daughter, Cheryl Unruh has created something so fresh and inviting—a memoir in lean vignettes. Each is moving on its own, and also part of a compelling portrait of a childhood in an isolated town with a dwindling population. Unruh’s details are too specific for sentimentalism, but places and people are observed with a loving gaze that also feels wise and honest. Her father, especially, emerges as both haunted and quietly heroic. What a beautiful book.”

Fans of Cheryl’s two previous collections of vivid Kansas essays, Flyover People (2011 KS Notable Book) and Waiting on the Sky (2015 KS Notable Book), and Walking on Water, her collection of poetry, will delight in this memoir. Unruh hopes that the book will inspire readers to write their own stories “whether they write for their own pleasure or choose to share their stories with family and friends or perhaps even go on to publish their writing.” Unruh will be scheduling a series of memoir writing workshops starting in the spring of 2022.

Gravedigger’s Daughter is available for order through meadowlark-books.square.site and may be ordered through any bookseller. Learn more at www.meadowlark-books.com.

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Cheryl Unruh to Speak at D2 November Meeting

11/9/2021

Cheryl Unruh is presenting at the next District 2 Meeting, Saturday, November 20, 2021 from 10:00-12:00pm at the Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vermont, lower level.

For 11 years, Cheryl Unruh wrote a weekly newspaper column, Flyover People, for The Emporia Gazette. She has twice received the Kansas Notable Book Award for her collections of Kansas essays, Flyover People and Waiting on the Sky, both published by Quincy Press. Meadowlark Press published her collection of poetry, Walking on Water, as well as her brand new book, Gravedigger’s Daughter, a memoir. She is the editor of 105 Meadowlark Reader, a Kansas journal of creative nonfiction. Cheryl lives in Emporia, Kansas.

Cheryl's book launch for Gravedigger's Daughter is scheduled for November 13, at 1:00 p.m. at the Lyon County History Center, 711 Commercial, Emporia.

Members Published in 105 Meadowlark Reader, Issue #2

11/2/2021

Carolyn Hall, D2 Member, is one of 21 Kansas Authors Club members published in the second issue of 105 Meadowlark Reader: Kansas Travel Stories.

The journal of Kansas creative nonfiction can be purchased at "Partner Bookstores" including Crow and Co Books (Hutchinson), Eighth Day Books (Wichita), Flint Hills Books (Council Grove), Raven Book Store (Lawrence), Russell Specialty Books & Gifts (Russell), and Watermark Books & Cafe (Wichita).

Subscriptions can also be purchased at Meadowlark Press.

Kansas Authors Club members featured in this issue include:

Ann Anderson (D2)

Curtis Becker (D2)

Sheryl Brenn (D7)

Annabelle Corrick (D1)

Gretchen Cassel Eick (D5)

Marie Baum Fletcher (D7)

Tammy Gilley (D6)

Michael D. Graves (D2)

Monica (Osgood) Graves (D2)

Carolyn Hall (D2)

Jerilynn Jones Henrikson (D2)

Sally Jadlow (D2)

Nancy Julien Kopp (D4)

Sandee Lee (D5)

Jim Potter (D6)

Julie A. Sellers (D1)

Mark Scheel (D2)

Tracy Million Simmons (D2)

Barbara Waterman-Peters (D1)

Brenda White (D2)

Editor, Chery Unruh (D2)

The journal is currently taking submissions for issue #3 to be published in the spring of 2022.

Theme: True Bicycle Stories
Guidelines can be found on the
105 Meadowlark Reader website.

District 6 Meeting Invitation - Saturday, May 22, 2021

5/17/2021

Cover of Issue #1 - 105 Meadowlark Reader, A Kansas Journal of Creative Nonfiction Cover photo by Dave Leiker

If you want to learn about writing, editing, or publishing, then you’re invited to attend Saturday’s (May 22, 2021 - 1:30pm) District 6 meeting of the Kansas Authors Club. It’s free and open to the public.

The Zoom meeting will have five speakers. Tracy Million Simmons, founder of Meadowlark Press, and Cheryl Unruh, editor of 105 Meadowlark Reader: A Kansas Journal of Creative Nonfiction, will share their vision of gathering true Kansas stories. The first issue of the journal highlights 35 talented Kansas writers from 25 counties.

Virtual attendees will also meet the other three prolific writers, all Kansas Authors Club members, and learn how they created their essays for submission for the spring issue. Each story is an authentic Kansas experience. The speakers, their home base, and essay titles, are: Miriam Iwashige, Partridge, “A Pandemic Privilege”; Julie Stielstra, Ellinwood/Chicago, “Barton County”; and Ginger Zyskowski, Seattle (formerly Hutchinson), “A Kansan and His Machines.”

There will be time for questions and answers.
105 Meadowlark Reader may be purchased at your local book store or at 105 Meadowlark Reader.

To join the 1:30 PM (CST) meeting, or to become a part of a community of Kansas writers, contact Jim Potter, president of District 6, at jim@copintheclassroom.com or 620-899-3144.

Kansas Authors Club Members to be Published in Inaugural Issue of 105: Meadowlark Reader

2/14/2021

The following Kansas Authors Club members had essays selected for publication in the first issue of 105: Meadowlark Reader, a Kansas journal of creative nonfiction. Issue #1, with the theme of "beginnings," is expected to be delivered to subscribers in early May, featuring 35 essays, including the following:

Gretchen Eick - D5
Marie Fletcher - D7
Beth Gulley - D2
Miriam Iwashige - D6
Nancy Julien Kopp - D4
Sandee Lee - D5
Don Marler - D5
Ruth Maus - D1
Julie Nischan - D1
Kevin Rabas - D2
Mark Scheel - D2
Julie Sellers - D4
Tyler Sheldon - D2
Julie Stielstra - D6
Barbara Waterman-Peters - D1
Jon Yenser - D7
Gloria Zachgo - D5
Ginger Zyskowski - D6

Cheryl Unruh (D2) of Quincy Press is the editor of the new journal, and Tracy Million Simmons (D2) of Meadowlark Press is the publisher. Readers are encouraged to subscribe before March 1 to take advantage of introductory pricing.

For those interested in submitting essays for issue #2, the theme will be "Kansas Travel Stories" and they will begin collecting those submissions in May and June of 2021

See 105meadowlarkreader.com for complete details.