Category: Kristine Polansky

Group Enjoys Zoom Open Mic

1/13/2023

Each month on 2nd Tuesdays, District 3 & 4 members have been gathering on ZOOM to share their written work.

You are invited!

The featured reader in February is Duane Johnson (Topeka member and former state president, 2020-21). Duane will be reading poems from his 2022 award-winning chapbook. After the featured reader, attendees are invited to share their own work (prepare for reading 3-4 minute excerpts, please).

Updated: This event has been moved to March
Save the date: Tuesday, March 14, 7pm

Members Nila Jean Spencer (Maryland), Tracy Million Simmons, Kris Polansky, Duane Johnson, Vickie Guillot, James Kenyon, and Nancy Julien Kopp met in January on Zoom for an Open Mic. Districts 3 & 4 began hosting this 2nd Tuesday meeting in 2021. All members of Kansas Authors Club are invited to attend.

Appreciation for our 2022 State Executive Board Members

12/28/2022

Please take a moment to thank the officers who have shared their time and talent with writers across the state of Kansas and beyond. The following individuals served on our 2022 State Board.

Tracy Million Simmons, President
Emporia, Kansas

Tracy Million Simmons enjoys writing about the people and places of her home state of Kansas, both real and imagined. Her writing resume includes more than 500 articles in print, from feature articles in national and niche publications to ghostwritten material for busy health professionals. She has worked with small press and book packagers on everything from book layout and design to editing. She is a past mini-fellowship winner from the Kansas Arts Commission and has been an honorable mention in the Kansas Voices contest (Winfield). Tracy is the author of Tiger Hunting (a novel) and A Life in Progress (short stories, fiction).

Tracy is the founder of Meadowlark Press, an independent publisher that focuses on stories and authors from the heartland. The press is the home of The Birdy Poetry Prize (since 2019) and 105 Meadowlark Reader: A Kansas Journal of Creative Nonfiction.

Tracy joined Kansas Authors Club in 2000. She has been a member and has served in various offices of Districts 7, 1, and 2. Tracy produced the Kansas Authors Club yearbook from 2006-2016. She has also served as Prose Contest Chair (2004), Newsletter Editor (2007-2010), Assistant Financial Secretary (2017-19), Financial Secretary (2018-20), and State Vice President (2021). In 2022, as well as fulfilling the role of president, Tracy served as the club’s first paid part-time manager.

Monica Graves, Financial Officer
Emporia, Kansas

Monica Graves is the Director of Dental Assisting and Division Chair of Health & Human Services at Flint Hills Technical College in Emporia, Kansas. She was recognized as a Distinguished Alumna of FHTC in 2017. Monica writes engaging stories about her upbringing in the rural Flint Hills where she lived with her parents, five sisters, one brother, and a couple of aunts in a farmhouse furnished with one bathroom and lots of love.

Monica has been published in 105 Meadowlark Reader. She has been a member of Kansas Authors Club since 2015.

Monica makes her home in Emporia with her husband, Michael D. Graves, author of the Pete Stone Private Detective series. Mike and Monica currently sponsor the First Chapter of a Book category of the annual literary contest.

Cathy Callen, Secretary
Lawrence, Kansas

Cathy Callen graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor's degree in English and elementary education, and from the University of Kansas with a master's degree in early childhood special education. She also attended the Kansas City Art Institute for two years, majoring in photography. Cathy spent her career with Topeka Public Schools as a teacher and later as coordinator of the district’s preschool special education program. Cathy has had poetry published in Inscape, a publication of Washburn University, and in Tallgrass Voices, a publication of poems by members of the Kansas Authors Club, edited by Gary Lechliter. Her non-fiction article, “Reconstituting Allen,” appeared in the Fall/Winter 2012 edition of Connections, a journal published by the Indiana Historical Society. Her non-fiction article, “Magic Mondays,” appeared in the Summer 2013 edition of UU World, the magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. Cathy’s article, “The Kansas City Daily Drovers Telegram and its leading role covering the livestock industry,” is included in the summer 2016 issue of the Jackson County (Missouri) Historical Society journal. In addition, she has written four books: Running out of Footprints (a family history), in 2013; Words in Rows, Poetry and Prose (a collection of poems and short prose), in 2016; Ginkgo Glen (a novel) in 2018; and Marble Shorts (essays) in 2022.

Cathy has been a member of the Kansas Authors Club since 2008 and was KAC state treasurer for 6 of those years. Cathy resides in Lawrence, Kansas.

Her website is: www.cathycallen.com

Kristine A. Polansky, Vice President
Manhattan, Kansas

As a writer, Kris Polansky, is best known for her poems, four of which were published in Tallgrass Voices edited by Gary Lechliter. She experiments with various poetic forms, studying how content and form shape each other. She grew up in Western Kansas (short grass country), writing puppet plays and short stories. She took a fiction writing class from James Gunn at the University of Kansas and went on to teach middle school English and social studies ten years before returning to school, the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas, where (she jokes) she learned to write creative nonfiction. She has been named KAC Poet of the Year three times, most recently October 2021. Her poem, “Turning Points” won the 2016 Martin Luther King, Jr. Art and Writing Contest, adult division, Manhattan, Kansas. She has served KAC for four years (2010-13) as Youth Contest Manager, 2021 as KAC Financial Secretary, and multiple years as District 4 Treasurer. She has also served as a judge for the youth contest.

2022 Youth Contest Results: Poetry

11/19/2022

Judge Kris Polansky
Poetry: Grades 3-4 and Grades 5-6

Kris Polansky focuses on how different techniques for breaking lines of poetry affect the rhythm (sound) and meaning of a poem. She was impressed by the playful rhymes and rhythms of the Grades 3-4 entries and the sophisticated rhythms and pace of the Grade 5-6 entries. She encourages all those who entered the contest to keep writing. She served KAC for four years (2010-13) as Youth Contest Manager. Subsequently, she has served as a judge for the youth contest several times and is currently KAC Vice President. She has been named KAC Poet of the Year three times, most recently October 2021.

POETRY: GRADES 3-4

1st A School Day, Julia Z. Jiao, Member District 1

2nd How Your Kitty Loves You, Julia Z. Jiao, Member District 1

3rd Soccer, Ronin Rohrback

Honorable Mention: Doggies, Julia Z. Jiao, Member District 1

POETRY: GRADES 5-6

1st Some Rain, Cassandra Northerns

2nd Snowboarding, Eli Sun

3rd What is Art?, Adain Smith

Honorable Mention: A Family, Addison Buck

Honorable Mention: Spring Returns, Cassandra Northerns

Judge Roy Beckemeyer
Poetry: Grades 7-8 and Grades 9-12

Roy Beckemeyer is a past-President of the Kansas Authors Club and was KAC Poet of the Year for a number of years. He has four books of poetry published and his poems appear in poetry anthologies as well as in print and online poetry and literary publications. He is a retired engineer and scientific journal editor and has studied fossil insects for over 20 years.

POETRY: GRADES 7-8

1st The Rose Gardener’s Poem, Madeline Male

2nd The Old Fashioned Family Farm, Madeline Male

3rd (TIE) Jawbreaker, Kane Johnson

3rd (TIE) Hay Season, Jack Etzel

Honorable Mention: Weightless, Campbell Hight

Honorable Mention: You are Not Alone, Haley Reiff

Honorable Mention: Women’s Rights Section, El Shipman

Honorable Mention: Lady Acrobat, Ava Von Lintel

Honorable Mention: Haiku, Eli Replolgle

Honorable Mention: I Have to Know, Katherine Stancil, Member District 2

Honorable Mention: Dancer’s Dilemma, Arielle Li

Honorable Mention: The Weather, Aubrey Wilkinson

Honorable Mention: Grandmother, Ansley Bear

Honorable Mention: Lineage Poem, Sophia Goombi

Honorable Mention: Family Poem, Cael Frazier

Honorable Mention: Lineage, Wyatt Schields

Honorable Mention: The First and the Last, Briar Page

Honorable Mention: Fortnite, Landon Hernandez

Honorable Mention: The Past Menace, Rhevl Murphy

Honorable Mention: Mamba Mentality, Kerrick DeDonder

Honorable Mention: July 4th, Emily Ditzler

Honorable Mention: Pancakes, Emily Ditzler

Honorable Mention: Fire Absorbing You, Abigail Bael-Wyrick

Honorable Mention: The Rain Bombardment, Amelia Gurney

POETRY: GRADES 9-12

1st Childhood Best Friend, Isobel Li

2nd A Box for a Body, Isobel Li

Honorable Mention: You Said, Arabella Gipp

Our annual contests for youth and adults open April 1 of each year and close on June 15. Guidelines are updated each year, so be sure to check for any updates after the first of the year before entering.

Contest Guidelines

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

KU's Spencer Research Library

6/19/2022

The Kansas Authors Club Library is stored within the Kansas Authors Collection at KU's Spencer Research Library.

Tracy Million Simmons (state president) and Kristine Polansky (state vice president) were able to deliver books to and tour the Kenneth Spencer Research Library in May.

The Kansas Authors Collection at Kenneth Spencer Research Library in Lawrence, includes the Kansas Authors Club Library. Memorabilia stored there, including books published by Kansas Authors Club members, has been collected by the club since 1907.

The collection was initially housed at the home of George Morehouse, an officer of the club. In the 1920s and 30s, part of the collection was displayed at the Kansas Free State Fair in Topeka, and became a permanent display at the Mid-West Exposition, which became the Kansas State Fair. In intervening years, the collection was housed at the Salina Public Library and at the Topeka Women's Club. The club's arrangement with Spencer Research Library began began in 1986.

Simmons and Polansky visited to clarify the arrangement. Books that have been submitted by members to the clubs book contests each year will be donated to the collection, as well as annual yearbooks and newsletters. This is a non-circulating collection, available for research and viewing upon request.

History of the collection is detailed in Donald Stewart Pady's History of the Kansas Authors Club, 1904-2014 (page 99-102) The publication is available for online viewing by members on the "member pages" of this website and for purchase here.

Recent titles in the Kansas Authors Club Library in the Kansas Collection at the Spencer Research Library in Lawrence.

Tuesday, November 9, 2021, at 7:00 p.m., is D3/D4 “OPEN MIKE NIGHT” via Zoom.

11/7/2021

Tuesday, November 9, 2021, at 7:00 p.m., is “OPEN MIKE NIGHT” via Zoom. Kris Polansky will start off by reading the poems that made her “Poet of the Year” for Kansas Authors Club. There are six of them, but they are short. So we need many more readers. Come sign in at 7:00. Sharing is what writing is all about!

Do you have an award-winning entry to share from the 2021 KAC Literary Contest? Or one from an earlier contest? Or a “should-have-won” of which you are proud? Or something you are working on? We want to hear it!

This and other 2nd Tuesday Zoom Meetings jointly provided by KAC Districts 3 and 4 are open to all KAC members. The Zoom link has been sent to members via email through your district president or district email announcement list.

Has last weekend’s convention encouraged you to encourage young writers?

10/11/2021

Tuesday, October 12, 2021, at 7:00 p.m., Kris Polansky will be leading a Zoom discussion on youth and writing, with an emphasis on ways we, as authors, can help teachers achieve classroom writing goals and how we can encourage the young writers in our own families. Kris will share several of her lesson plans, including one aimed at getting young students to “own” their poems (or other writings) when presenting them orally. That is a skill all of us can use!

This and other 2nd Tuesday Zoom Meetings jointly provided by KAC Districts 3 and 4 are open to all KAC members. As noted in the District section of the KAC website, contact KAC email for the meeting link.

2021 Poetry Contest Winners

10/10/2021

Thanks to our Members and Friends Who Took the Time to Help Judge our Youth Contests

10/9/2021

Many thanks to those
who volunteered their time and expertise
to judge the 2021 Kansas Authors Club
Youth Writing Contests.

Kris Polansky
Poetry Grades 3-4 and Grades 5-6

Kristine A. Polansky wrote puppet plays and some poetry as a child but her dream was to write and publish short stories. She took a fiction writing class from James Gunn at the University of Kansas and went on to teach middle school English and social studies ten years before returning to school and obtaining a law degree. Wanting a creative outlet but pressed for time while practicing law, she started writing poems. She experiments with different poetic forms and studies how content and form shape each other. Four of her poems were published in Tallgrass Voices edited by Gary Lechliter. Her poem, “Turning Points” won the 2016 Martin Luther King, Jr. Art and Writing Contest, adult division, Manhattan, Kansas. She has received numerous awards from KAC for her poetry and was named KAC Poet of the Year twice, most recently October 2020.

Roy Beckemeyer
Poetry Grades 7-8 and 9-12

Roy Beckemeyer is a past-President of the Kansas Authors Club and was KAC Poet of the Year for a number of years. He has four books of poetry published and his poems appear in poetry anthologies as well as in print and online poetry and literary publications. He is a retired engineer and scientific journal editor and has studied fossil insects for over 20 years.

Krista Reed
Fiction Grades 3-4 and Grades 5-6

Krista Reed graduated from Pittsburg State University with a degree in Elementary Education, and went on to receive her Master's Degree in Education from Baker University. She has more than 25 years of experience teaching grades 2-8. Her passion is watching children develop to their fullest potential, both educationally and emotionally. In her free time, she enjoys camping, reading, and spending time with her family. Her newest title as "Gammy" is most rewarding and cherished.

Curtis Becker
Fiction Grades 7-8 and 9-12

Curtis Becker is a teacher, editor, and publisher living in Topeka, KS. His work has appeared in anthologies, literary journals, and magazines. He has presented on writing and teaching at academic conferences and to small groups. Becker’s book, He Watched and Took Note, was released in 2018. An educator for over fifteen years, Becker currently teaches at Holton Middle School in Holton, KS. He sponsors the yearbook and coaches scholars bowl at HMS. Additionally, he coaches debate and forensics at Holton High School. Becker earned a Bachelors and Masters in English and Creative Writing and holds professional licensure in Kansas, highly qualified in English Language Arts and Speech Communications.

Robin Clasen Wunderlich
Non-Fiction Grades 3-4 and 5-6

Robin Clasen Wunderlich is the editor and publisher of the Eureka Herald and President of the Kansas Press Association Board of Directors. Robin is the daughter of the late Dick and Rachel Clasen. Dick Clasen was a KPA president and member of the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame, as was his father, George H. Clasen II. Robin and her husband, Wes have two children and live south of Eureka, Kansas.

Anna Curry
Non-Fiction Grades 7-8 and Grades 9-12

Anna Curry is a mother of four busy children on a ranch in east central Kansas. She enjoys sharing stories about her children and their rural life on her blog as a way to not only preserve cherished memories but also advocate for agriculture. Anna has always enjoyed writing as a creative outlet as well as woodworking. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma State University and master’s from Texas A&M.

Meet the Officers: Kristine Polansky

5/11/2021

Kansas Authors Club is run by an all-volunteer board. Officers from across the state devote time monthly to everything from district programming to our annual writing contests and convention. Visit with your district representative about how you can contribute

As a writer, Kris Polansky, is best known for her poems, four of which were published in Tallgrass Voices edited by Gary Lechliter. She experiments with various poetic forms, studying how content and form shape each other. She grew up in Western Kansas (short grass country), writing puppet plays and short stories. She took a fiction writing class from James Gunn at the University of Kansas and went on to teach middle school English and social studies ten years before returning to school, the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas, where (she jokes) she learned to write creative nonfiction. She has been named KAC Poet of the Year twice, most recently October 2020. Her poem, “Turning Points” won the 2016 Martin Luther King, Jr. Art and Writing Contest, adult division, Manhattan, Kansas. She served KAC for four years (2010-13) as Youth Contest Manager. Subsequently, she has served as a judge for the youth contest and is currently KAC Financial Secretary. She is also serving as KAC District 4 treasurer.

2020 Writers of the Year

10/4/2020

Congratulations to our 2020 Award Winners!

Kristine A. Polansky, Poet of the Year

Julie A. Sellers, Prose Writer of the Year

Length of Membership REcognition - 2020

10/3/2020

It is with sincere appreciation that we acknowledge your dedication and contribution to Kansas Authors Club. Please accept this small token of our gratitude. We look forward to many more years of fellowship and growing our organization for the benefit of writers like you.

Length of Membership Awards

Fred C. Appelhanz – 15 years
Roy J. Beckemeyer – 10 years
Patricia Bonine – 10 years
Annabelle Corrick – 10 years
Edna M. Dyck – 50 years*
Pauline Fecht – 20 years
Marie Fletcher – 30 years
Jean Grant – 10 years
Yvonne Evie Green – 20 years
Reaona T. Hemmingway – 15 years
Kelly W. Johnston – 10 years
Carole Katsantoness – 10 years
Peg Nichols – 15 years
Kristine A. Polansky – 15 years
Cheryl Skupa – 10 years
Candace C. Sherman – 30 years

Octogenarians
Sylvia Colombo (2018)
Tom Mach