Category: Gretchen Cassel Eick

Invitation from Gretchen Eick (D5)

3/23/2022

Saturday, March 26 at 7 pm a one-act, four-scenes play by Gretchen Eick about life in today's Turkey for peace activists will be performed at Lorraine Avenue Mennonite Church, 655 N Lorraine, Wichita (2 blocks south of Kellogg and one block west of Hillside). It is free and appropriate for all ages. The play is performed by the Peace Committee of the church and especially relevant as we see the violations of human rights in Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere. Please come!

D5 Member, Gretchen Eick, Presents "Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest" via Newton Public Library

2/9/2022

February 15, 2022 - 7:00pm (CST)

Join Newton Public Library for an online author talk and interactive Q&A with Gretchen Eick. Eick will discuss her 2007 book, "Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72."

To register and get the Zoom link, click here: https://us06web.zoom.us/.../reg.../WN_WmU8FfrYS7WvhVyvnLm3Bg. The program will also be streamed live on the Newton Public Library Facebook page. Need help connecting? Please contact the library!

About the Book:
On a hot summer evening in 1958, a group of African American students in Wichita, Kansas, quietly entered Dockum's Drug Store and sat down at the whites-only lunch counter. This was the beginning of the first sustained, successful student sit-in of the modern civil rights movement, instigated in violation of the national NAACP's instructions. Based on interviews with over eighty participants and observers of this sit-in, Dissent in Wichita traces the contours of race relations and black activism in an unexpected locus of the civil rights movement, revealing that the movement was a national, not a Southern, phenomenon.

About the Author:
Dr. Gretchen Cassel Eick, a professor emerita of history at Friends University has received two Fulbright fellowships and was for ten years a professional lobbyist in Washington, D.C.

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.

2021 Prose Contest Winners

10/10/2021

2021 J. Donald & Bertha Coffin Memorial Book Award

10/9/2021

They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastman's Story
by Gretchen Cassel Eick

From Judge, Robert Rebein:

This year’s field of entries featured outstanding books in multiple genres, including adult fiction (including historical fiction), young adult fiction, memoir, and biography. The sheer variety of submissions made the contest particularly difficult to judge. Indeed, I could easily have picked a separate winner from each other above categories. For this reason, I have chosen to name not only an overall winner but also the three finalists from which the winner was selected. Feel free to recognize all three or just the winner, as you see fit.

My three finalists are:

They Met at Wounded Knee by Gretchen Cassel Eick
The Big Quiet by Lisa D. Stewart
Opulence, Kansas by Julie Stielstra

Gretchen Cassel Eick’s They Met at Wounded Knee tells story of Charles Ohiyesa Eastman, a Dakota physician, and Elaine Goodale Eastman, a teacher and supervisor of education among the Sioux, who met while witnessing the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre and subsequently married and raised six children, even as they worked tirelessly on behalf of citizenship and equal rights for Native Americans. The book is meticulously researched and written and makes important contributions to the fields of biography, history, and Native American Studies. It succeeds not only as a portrait of two complex people and their equally complex marriage, but also as a portrait of a turbulent era in American history—roughly the last decade of the 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th century—that has much in common with the times in which we live now.

On the basis of its contributions to multiple fields and its daring exploration of form as a double biography, I have chosen to recognize Gretchen Cassel Eick’s They Met at Wounded Knee as the winner of this year’s J. Donald Coffin Award.

Please extend my congratulations to the . . . winner of this year’s award.

Thanks again and best wishes,
Robert Rebein
2021 Coffin Memorial Book Award Judge

Judge:

Robert Rebein was born and raised in Dodge City, where his family has farmed and ranched since the late 1920s. Rebein received his BA in English from the University of Kansas. His subsequent degrees include an MA from Exeter University in England and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of two award-winning memoirs about growing up in Kansas, Dragging Wyatt Earp: A Personal History of Dodge City (Swallow, 2013) and Headlights on the Prairie: Essays on Home (Kansas, 2017), as well as a work of literary criticism, Hicks, Tribes, & Dirty Realists: American Fiction after Postmodernism (Kentucky, 2001). His unpublished works include a novel-in-progress entitled The Last Rancher. Rebein teaches creative writing at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in downtown Indianapolis.

Writing About History: Nonfiction and Fiction

10/4/2021

Do you write (or want to write) historical novels or historical nonfiction (memoirs, biographies, studies of a community or a business at a particular historical time)?

Saturday, October 16, KAC's District 5 will feature a how-to program with the opportunity to use the steps presented to plan your approach to your manuscript whatever stage you are in. Gretchen Eick is a professional historian, her Ph.D. in American Studies from K.U. in 1998 and 20 years as a university professor. She wrote two prize-winning books published by university presses--Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72 (University of Illinois Press, 2002/2007) and They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans' Story (University of Nevada Press, 2020). Eick also has four published historical novels and a fifth expected in early 2022, as well as a book of short stories, an edited anthology, and a local history she co-wrote with Wichita State professors.

She will present how to research and write historical background that is authentic and engaging, how to make your writing accurate in its details of the time period, and how to generate interest in your manuscript among those most likely to have an interest in promoting it. Part of the session will involve participants in planning a piece of writing for themselves following her guidelines.

Kansas Authors Club D5 meeting is in person at Asbury Church 15th and St, Paul, Wichita, Saturday, October 16, 1:30-3:30 PM. If you cannot attend in person, meet with us via Zoom by clicking the registration button below in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. There is no need to preregister if you are attending in person.

2021 Convention: Panel on Small Kansas Independent Book Publishers

9/17/2021

There is still time to purchase your ticket for the 2021 Kansas Authors Club Convention! These four accomplished children's book authors are among the great speakers and workshops you will have access to at the virtual event, which will take place October 8-10.

Purchase your ticket through Submittable. Use the button below!

Kansas boasts an amazing array of talented and dedicated independent book publishers. Their owners are the folks who promote and publish the poetry and prose of talented wordsmiths who might never land or seek a contract with any of the big New York publishers. Meadowlark, Blue Cedar, One Voice and Spartan are all racking up some impressive title inventories and many of them are KAC members’ books. How and why do these small publishers deal with the little fish? What is their vision for their companies and the talented authors they recruit? Do they accept submissions? What do they charge?

The members of this panel will give us a brief history of their dedicated service to Kansas authors. They include:

Tracy Million Simmons of Meadowlark–
Owner/Publisher of Meadowlark Press, enjoys reading and writing about the people and places of her home state of Kansas, both real and imagined. She started Meadowlark Books in 2014 with the publication of Green Bike, a group novel, with Kevin Rabas and Michael D. Graves. Since that time, Meadowlark has published books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, including the 2016 Kansas Notable Book, To Leave a Shadow by Michael D. Graves, the 2020 Kansas Notable Book, Headwinds, by Edna Bell-Pearson, and the 2021 Kansas Notable Book, All Hallows' Shadows, by Michael D. Graves. Opulence, Kansas, by Julie Stielstra was the winner of the 2021 Midwest Book Award in YA fiction.

Gretchen Eick of Blue Cedar–
After fourteen years as a foreign and military policy lobbyist in Washington, Gretchen Eick became a professor of history. Awarded two Fulbright Scholar awards (to Latvia and Bosnia and Herzegovina) and a Fulbright Hays travel grant to South Africa, she is the author of seven books, two scholarly histories, four novels, and a book of short stories. Her books include
Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-1972 (U of IL Press, 2001/2007) and They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans’ Story (University of Nevada Press)

Blue Cedar Press published its first books in 2015. Michael Poage, the founder, wanted to start a press that would focus on poetry written by new voices that he believed should be published and heard. His wife, Gretchen Eick, a published writer of nonfiction, had begun writing novels and wanted the press to publish fiction and nonfiction from new voices also, particularly the voices of today’s “other America”—people of color, immigrants, young people, people of nontraditional sexual orientation, as well as people from other countries.

Jason Ryberg of Spartan Press–
Jason Ryberg is the author of fourteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His latest collection of poems is Are You Sure Kerouac Done It This Way!? (co-authored with John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger, OAC Books, 2021). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy goat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Will Leathem founded Spartan Press in the late 1990s as a vehicle to bring awareness to the stunning writing talent Kansas City has to offer. As part-owner of Prospero’s Books, he has been an endless champion for small presses and local and national poetry, hosting hundreds of events.

Jan Gilbert Hurst of Author’s Voice–
In her business--Author’s Voice Publishing—Jan’s mission is to help aspiring writers become published authors. She provides all the services needed to shepherd manuscripts through editing, design, production, and print, to become polished books that authors are proud to present to the world. She appreciates one adoring husband, two grown sons, and three delightful grandchildren. Her spare time overflows with volunteering as a leader in Outdoor Ministry. She sporadically works on her own historical novel, regularly attends MacNovelists, a writers’ group in McPherson, and enjoys meeting new people as a member of the Kansas Authors Club.

2021 Convention Page

2021 Convention Workshops

D5 Member, Gretchen Eick, Speaking at Kansas Book Festival

9/16/2021

Gretchen Eick will be speaking on a panel at the Kansas Book Festival about writing books that treat controversial subjects and/or historical material that is little known by the general public. She will be using her latest book as her case in point: They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans' Story (University of Nevada, 2020).

She has had two articles accepted for publication in the first two issues by 105 Meadowlark Reader: A Kansas Journal of Creative Nonfiction.

She is revising the sequel to her historical novel Maybe Crossings for publication in early 2022. The sequel is set in 2019 with a working title When the Road Splayed.

She will be speaking to the District 5 KAC group Saturday, October 16 at 1:30 on researching and writing historical fiction and nonfiction.

Member Book Review: Kindred Verse, Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables, by Julie A. Sellers

7/15/2021

D5 member Gretchen Cassel Eick, shares this review of a new book of poetry by D1 member Julie Sellers.

Julie A. Sellers’ Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables (Blue Cedar Press, June 15, 2021) takes readers on a whimsical stroll through early 20th Century Canada, but also through the places and people they discovered within the covers of books and fell in love with when they were young. Her encounters with Anne of Green Gables shaped who Julie became, giving her courage and confidence to be her own unique and original self, courage to see with the eyes of imagination.

I am a newcomer to Anne of Green Gables. I am now reading the 8 books by L.M. Montgomery, the Canadian author who spun beautiful, vivid stories of the highly intelligent orphan girl who shares her way of seeing with those she meets. Anne is quirky and literate beyond her years. Her yearnings are to learn as much as possible, to lift herself from the drudgery of her orphan life with imagination, to see beauty and wonder, and to become someone who makes a difference.

Julie visited Prince Edward Island, Canada, on her honeymoon and returned with a folio of photos and a mind abuzz with words and phrases uniquely hers that she lavishes on her readers. Whether they are familiar with Anne or not, readers find this special place and special girl haunting and kindred.

Read this book and give it to those you love. Let Julie’s beautiful photos and poems so gracefully presented in this book thanks to designer Jay Wallace stir your emotions, your memories, and remind you of your dreams.

Purchase Kindred Verse at Blue Cedar Press. Also available wherever you buy books.

Thank you to Gretchen Eick for taking us up on our challenge to members! A good Kansas Authors Club citizen helps celebrate the writing and publishing news of fellow members!

Challenge to Members: Explore the newly updated “meet our members” pages. Get to know your fellow Kansas Authors Club members by checking out their websites and their books.

Challenge #1: Select a member, send a note of introduction, and offer to write up a “meet a member” bio that can be shared on our website and social media channels. Check out the Welcome Wagon introductions for inspiration. Submit it here!

Challenge #2: Read a book by a member and share a review. Submit (the link or the review) and we will share it too!

Writers in the Community report from District 5

3/4/2021

WRITERS IN COMMUNITY:

District 5 recently held a writing contest for Tracey Anderson’s gifted Sixth-grade English classes in Derby. Judges were Connie White, Gretchen Eick, Sandee Taylor, Amy Ackerman, Taylor Stuckey, and Ray aka "Griz" Racobs. We used two judges for each of three genres: flash fiction, short story, and poetry. We wanted the kids to see how different judges vary in their evaluations. We awarded 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, and some honorable mentions for each genre. Griz and Connie presented the kids with their awards (gift cards or cash and certificates, and spent an hour with each group talking about our experiences as writers. The kids were eager to talk, and asked us to come back next year. We would encourage the districts to reach out to the schools in this manner. We will be asking more D5 members to join in the judging next year. We received Derby school water bottles filled with candy, and thank-you cards handmade by the students.

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.

Wichita Library Virtual Discussion: The Hard Verge: Britain 2025, by Gretchen Eick

1/5/2021

Book Event Announcement from Gretchen Eick:

January 27th 6-7:30 PM, the Wichita Public Library will have a virtual discussion of my 2019 near-future book The Hard Verge: Britain 2025.

Gretchen Eick of District 5 is the author and will be present for the discussion. The library has copies so no one needs to purchase the book. If people register, they will receive the Zoom address 24 hours in advance. Call 688-9580 or visit wichitalibrary.org/events to register online: https://wichita.evanced.info/signup/eventdetails?EventId=11744

The novel is about asylum seekers in London in the post-Brexit years of an Ultra Right party's dominance of British politics. When a Syrian woman journalist disappears, her partner's search for her leads into the legal and illegal refugee community and to a small group of Members of Parliament willing to investigate what is happening in the privatized detention centers. Investigations that ensue uncover disturbing activity at Poton Downs, a top secret British weapons laboratory, and the Ultras' alarming increase of surveillance. Is she still alive? Will Ana be found? What about the tens of thousands of others seeking asylum? And their children?

New Book from D5 member, Gretchen Eick

9/22/2020

Gretchen Eick has a new book coming Oct. 30 from the University of Nevada Press. THEY MET AT WOUNDED KNEE: THE EASTMANS' STORY is a double biography and history of the era between the Civil War and World War II and that era's best known Native American, Dakota physician Charles Ohiyesa Eastman and his Anglo wife Elaine Goodale Eastman. Both were writers (11 books apiece), advocates for a humane policy toward indigenous Americans, and lobbyists. Charles is why Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls do Indian badges. He traveled the U.S. and Britain, spoke out against the Indian Bureau's policies and worked for the right to vote for Native Americans. The Eastmans' interracial marriage is a window on how racism operated in the U.S. during this time. Few physicians then had medical degrees, but Charles earned an MD yet white patients would not accept him. This history/biography has been acclaimed by Philip Deloria (Harvard's first tenured professor of Native American history and author of PLAYING INDIAN and INDIANS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES) and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

We want to help you share your writing news!

If you have news of writing events that would be of interest to all Kansas Authors Club members, or if you are a member (dues current) who would like to announce an achievement, please submit your news via this form.

The Set Up 1984: Classified Until 2064, novel, by D5 Member Gretchen eick Now available

9/22/2020

Note from Gretchen: "My 4th novel is now in print as of late August. It is based on a true story of British (and one Greek) guys who bring a huge shipment of cannabis resin from Lebanon to Britain and are met by Customs Officials and police October 4, 1984 when they begin unloading it. THE SET UP 1984: CLASSIFIED UNTIL 2064 is based on this event. It imagines why the British government would do something so rare as to classify this case for 80 years. It is a novel of international intrigue with a cast of characters who simply want to make some money during a recession and are clearly out of their league. The book includes a discussion of sources and a study guide for book groups. It can be ordered at any library or bookstore or through Amazon or Blue Cedar Press (paperback and ebook formats). $18/$7

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Member contributions in anthology published by blue cedar press

9/20/2020

Congratulations to D5 member, Gretchen Eick, and the following Kansas Authors Club members who were published in this anthology: Ronda Miller (D2), Jim Potter (D6), Mark McCormick (D5), Judy Keller Hatteberg (D5), Robert Dean (D5), Michael Poage (D5), Julie Baker Brinn (D7), Mike Graves (D2), Ruth Maus (D1), Julie Stielstra (D6), Mark Scheel (D2), Miriam Iwashige (D6), Najiyah Maxfield (D6), Janet Stotts (D1), and Diane Wahto (D5).

PRESS RELEASE
September 20, 2020

The Death Project: An Anthology for These Times is now in print and available to order at your favorite bookstore and Amazon.

This book is a 205 page anthology of stories, poems, mini memoirs, and factual pieces about the various ways we lose loved ones to death and how we grieve and heal. It is a collaboration by 36 writers from across the US, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Britain, Turkey, etc. who contributed their writing to help others suffering from grief or anticipation of grief. It is intended to expand readers' thinking, feeling, and imagining about this universal, often-hidden experience brought relentlessly to the world's consciousness in 2020.

The writers are Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Bah'ais, atheists, and New Age, and of different races and ethnicities. Some write of family loss including suicide, others of war or devastating illness, of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. Others share rituals that helped them recover.

Published by Blue Cedar Press (Wichita, KS) and edited by Dr. Gretchen Eick and Cora Poage, proceeds from the sales of The Death Project after the cost of publication and shipping will go to an assortment of international organizations fighting COVID-19. $12 paperback, $7 ebook (epub and Kindle).

For more information contact:
Gretchen Eick, 316-682-8818
eickgc@gmail.com

We want to help you share your writing news!

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.

Congratulations to D5 member, Gretchen Cassel Eick

5/4/2020

Gretchen Cassel Eick's latest book will be published by the University of Nevada Press fall 2020. They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastmans' Story is a history and double biography acclaimed by Philip Deloria, Professor of Harvard's Native American and Indigenous Studies Department. Deloria writes "They Met at Wounded Knee brilliantly tells the story of one of the most intriguing couples in American history. Gretchen Eick surehandedly demonstrates the ways that individual lives reveal the structural dilemmas of settler colonialism, representational politics, and the painful entanglements of race, class, and gender."

Eick is the author of Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72 (University of Illinois Press, 2001/2007) and four novels (Maybe Crossings, Finding Duncan, The Hard Verge: Britain, 2025, and The Set Up, 1984: Britain's Biggest Drug Bust, Classified until 2064 (forthcoming 2020).

Invitation from Gretchen Eick (D5)

D5 Member, Gretchen Eick, Presents "Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest" via Newton Public Library

Members Published in 105 Meadowlark Reader, Issue #2

2021 Prose Contest Winners

2021 J. Donald & Bertha Coffin Memorial Book Award

They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastman's Story
by Gretchen Cassel Eick

Writing About History: Nonfiction and Fiction

2021 Convention: Panel on Small Kansas Independent Book Publishers

D5 Member, Gretchen Eick, Speaking at Kansas Book Festival

Member Book Review: Kindred Verse, Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables, by Julie A. Sellers

Writers in the Community report from District 5

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

Wichita Library Virtual Discussion: The Hard Verge: Britain 2025, by Gretchen Eick

New Book from D5 member, Gretchen Eick

The Set Up 1984: Classified Until 2064, novel, by D5 Member Gretchen eick Now available

Member contributions in anthology published by blue cedar press

River City Poetry - June 2020

Congratulations to D5 member, Gretchen Cassel Eick

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They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastman's Storyby Gretchen Cassel Eick

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They Met at Wounded Knee: The Eastman's Story
by Gretchen Cassel Eick