Category: Jim Potter

Jim Potter, D6, Published in 105 Meadowlark Reader

5/6/2022

A Note from D6 President, Jim Potter:

I'm honored to be one of the 32 creative non-fiction stories in Issue #3 published by 105 Meadowlark Reader. My essay's titled "I Didn't Have a Bicycle, but I had a Paper Route: Serving Civil Papers." Within the essay I recall serving an Order & Writ of Execution for the Reno County Sheriff's Office. The defendant who answered the door was a woman wearing nothing but a hot pink towel.

To read my story, purchase this issue at Crow & Co. in Hutchinson, KS, or at your favorite bookstore.

--Jim Potter, District 6

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.

Upcoming Book Release: Jim Potter

4/29/2022

District 6 President, Jim Potter, has written Deputy Jennings Meets the Amish (a novella), released by Sandhenge Publications. Read/listen to chapter one on the author's website.

Stay tuned for news about the book launch date!

Jim Potter Website

The Bicycle Issue of 105 Meadowlark Reader: A Kansas Journal of Creative Nonfiction

4/25/2022

105 Issue #3 Cover Photo by Scott Branine, flickr.com/photos/scott_branine/

Congratulations to Kansas Authors Club members with essays in the “True Bicycle Stories” issue (#3) of 105 Meadowlark Reader.

(D2) Bicycles: A Love Story by Boyd Bauman

(D5) Where I Like by Julie Ann Baker Brin

(D1) BlueBoy by Annabelle Corrick

(D2) A Green Bike by Monica Graves

(D2) The Bucket List by Beth Gulley

(D2) Going to C’ago by Carolyn Hall

(D2) Whoa by Jerilynn Henrikson,

(D2) Blue English Racer by Deb Irsik

(D2) My First, Last, and Only Bike by Sally Jadlow

(D5) What I Learned from Riding the Bicycle by Amy Deckert Kliewer

(D5) Bicycles in Kansas Yards by Sandee Lee

(D2) Dust on My Shoulders by Kerry Moyer

(D2) A Rolling Start by Peg Nichols

(D6) I Didn’t Have a Bicycle but I had a Paper Route by Jim Potter

(D5) Country Biking in Kansas by Cynthia C. Schaker

(D1) They Traded My Horse for a Bicycle by Anne Spry

(D1) The Race by Barbara Waterman-Peters

(D2) Bicycles: Bane or Boon by Brenda White

(D2) On Shaky Wheels by Mary Kate Wilcox

(D7) Bike Ride by Sheree Wingo

The Bicycle Issue will be delivered to Partner Bookstores and Subscribers beginning in May.

The submission period for the Fall 2022 issue is May 1-June 30. The theme is (True) Food Stories.
Learn more at 105MeadowlarkReader.com

About 105 Meadowlark Reader

Our Mission
To create a forum for sharing the work of Kansas writers.
To build and uplift the community of Kansas writers.
To share and promote resources for Kansas writers.

105 Meadowlark Reader will strive to represent the diversity of writers in Kansas.

105 Meadowlark Reader is a journal of creative nonfiction by and for writers who live or have lived in Kansas.

Each issue will contain a directory of area resources for writers. Publishers, printers, editors, book designers, cover/interior artists, bookstores, writing clubs, and anyone who provides services to writers is invited to submit details for our directory at no charge.

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

Do you have a member book review to submit? Please submit via this form.

Book Review: 31 Days (Nights): Memoir of Living Black in America

3/3/2022

31 Days (Nights): Memoir of Living Black in America
by Reginald D. Jarrell

Book Review by Jim Potter

Can you tell a book by its cover? This is a question that author Reginald D. Jarrell addresses in his just published book, 31 Days (Nights): Memoir of Living Black in America (Blue Cedar Press, 2022).

The question is a theme in Jarrell’s memoir as he revisits his life as a Black man growing up in a country where the color of a person’s skin causes people, mostly Caucasian, to prejudge. Jarrell also makes it clear that the real issue has never been his color or his race, it’s been about “them,” those with a problem of accepting people as people.

Speaking in generalities, I’m curious what demographic will most warmly welcome 31 Days (Nights). Will people of color appreciate Jarrell’s personal experiences because they identify, having walked in his shoes? Will potential readers, targets of hate, see the book as an affirmation of surviving their own day-to-day struggles while encountering prejudice? Will people of color welcome the author’s memories? Or will they feel like they have their own painful, real-life stories, and prefer—for their own mental health—to avoid being reminded of past—even present—wrongs?

I appreciate 31 Days (Nights) because, like any memoir, it’s personal. Jarrell’s stories are American history. In textbooks and on video, we can learn about racism and the Civil Rights Movement, but it takes true-life stories to give the world-wide racial picture a heartbeat in living color.

In today’s politically and culturally divided world, it’s clear that most people seek out others who support their worldview. I imagine people who support equal rights, especially racial equality, will welcome 31 Days (Nights) as a valuable example of the wrongs that need righted.

I also expect that those people who believe systemic and institutional racism doesn’t exist, or that it ever existed, won’t have the slightest interest in the read because it won’t support their belief system.

31 Days (Nights) isn’t for everyone, but I found it exceptionally well-done. It’s a reminder of how far we’ve come as a society, and unfortunately, how far we still have to go.

Jim Potter is a member of District 6.
Reginald Jarrell is a member of District 5.

Do you have a member book review to submit? Please submit via this form.

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.

2020 Service Award, Jim Potter

10/3/2020

Jim Potter became a member of Kansas Authors Club in 2015. He became president of District 6 in 2019, and has recruited at least 28 members to the organization since that time. Jim led the way in transitioning to Zoom meetings in 2020, the first of our seven districts to do so. In fact, his district began meeting twice a month, once for a program and once for a read around. Jim has been a dedicated leader on behalf of his district and our state organization. I submit Jim Potter (D6) for a merit award for service to Kansas Authors Club.

-presented by Tracy Million Simmons

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

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District 6 Members Release Anthology

8/29/2020

As published in the Hutchinson News, August 28, 2020:

"Nearly 30 of the region’s writers and poets are featured in a new book available this weekend, an anthology of works that celebrate a mixture of genres and voices.

Some writers are being published for the first time, while others are adding another publication to an already heavy shelf of their work.

What unifies them is their membership in District 6 of the Kansas Authors Club."

Read the article.